Dog of Law
by chi-chi-chimera
Summary: When Rodimus and the Squad are thrown in a cell on Luna 1 by Tyrest, it isn't a small green and white mech they find waiting for them, but a small green and white turbofox.
1. Chapter 1

Rodimus picked himself up from the floor of the cell fuming and brushed dust off his plating. This place was filthy. Probably hadn't been used in vorns. He turned and shouted a few more invectives at the big voiceless mechs who had dragged them here, not that it did anything. Made him feel better anyway. What had Tyrest called them again... Legislators?

"Everybody here and okay?" he asked. Various helms around the room nodded. "Alright, sound off," he said. "Who's all here?"

The full count turned out to be Tailgate, Chromedome, Perceptor, Brainstorm, and himself. Not great. No sign of Ratchet, Whirl or Cyclonus. They had caught a glimpse of Ultra Magnus in a corridor somewhere, but he hadn't even reacted to the sight of them walking past in cuffs, being dragged by Decepticons. So he wasn't going to be any help. They had to get out of this themselves.

"So... did anyone bring their prison-breaking equipment?" he asked, trying to stay optimistic.

"Give me a lab and a few cycles and sure, I could whip you up something," Brainstorm replied. "Right now, no."

"Don't you have anything in that briefcase of yours?" Rodimus asked. "Why else do you carry it around everywhere with you."

"It wouldn't be helpful."

Rodimus exvented. What to do, what to do? Wait here for whatever Tyrest wanted to do with them? That was a clear no. This was a pretty secure cell though. He didn't know how they were going to get out of trouble this time.

There was movement out of the corner of his optic. Rodimus snapped round and saw whatever it was flinch even further into the shadows beneath the benches that lined the floor. "Nobody move," he said, holding his servos out.

"What is it?" Tailgate asked.

"There's something under the seats," Rodimus replied. He inched forwards and crouched down for a better look. He wasn't armed, which wasn't so great, but the thing didn't look that big. It was... about the size of some kind of mechanimal actually. He crept a little closer and the creature responded by flinching back. A low growl started up.

"It's okay," Rodimus said, as soothingly and confidently as he could. "It's okay, we won't hurt you. We're all friends here. C'mon. Come out here. It's okay. You can trust us."

The beast didn't move at first, but it stopped growling. Rodimus made a few more coaxing, beckoning motions, and after some hesitation, the creature finally started to creep towards him slowly and cautiously. As it came out into the dim, dingy light of the cell it proved to be a turbofox. It didn't look like a wild turbofox, even though it was acting a bit like one. It was a sleek-plated example of the species, with pretty green and white colouration. No, this had to be someone's pet. A strain of turbofox bred for the fancy market.

"Hey boy," Rodimus said, putting his servo out so it could scent him, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. "What are _you_ doing in here?"

"Maybe he was a very bad fox?" Brainstorm suggested, amusement in his voice. The turbofox turned its head and yapped at him.

Rodimus laughed. "I think it disagrees with you," he said. He inched his servo forward while the 'fox was distracted and went to scratch behind its audial prongs. Almost immediately the creature whipped around and fastened its sharp dentae on his digits. Rodimus yanked his servo away with a yelp of pain and looked disapprovingly at it.

"Hey," he said. "Brainstorm was right. You _are_ a bad boy."

The turbofox looked almost sheepish. Rodimus held out his servo again, but this time the 'fox rose up on its hindlegs and folded its paws over his reaching servo and wrist. Rodimus chuckled. "Someone taught you to shake!" he said, delighted. "Alright, alright, I get it. You didn't mean to bite. You were just scared. Who knows how long you've been trapped in here without your owner." The turbofox growled at that last word.

"Your owner?" Rodimus said. The 'fox growled again. "Guess nothing good happened to _him_ then."

"He's adorable," Tailgate said, coming over and crouching down next to him. The turbofox wasn't that much smaller than he was. Rodimus suddenly had a vivid mental image of Tailgate riding it like a petropony and couldn't help from smirking. Now _that_ would be adorable. "It's not fair that he was hiding in here. I wonder how long it's been since anyone fed him."

"Oh!" Rung said, straightening suddenly and then popping a panel out of his side. "I have something." He produced a little canister and slid the top open, shaking a few energon sticks out into his servo. "Here." He held them out towards the turbofox, who sniffed, went stiff, then flicked its tail and buried its snout in Rung's palm. The treats were gone within astroseconds, and a long glossa slid out to lick the energon dust from Rung's plating.

"Yeah, I get the idea he maybe hasn't been fed in a while," Rodimus said, frowning. "You got any more of those?"

Rung nodded, tipping the canister out into his servo again. "We can't leave him here."

"That's assuming we can even get out of here at all," Rodimus said, venting. "I wish we knew what Tyrest is up to. What's with all the weird drones? Why's he hiring Decepticons? What's with the damn _titan graveyard_ out there? What about the hotspot? Just... _what is going on?_"

The turbofox looked up from chomping on snacks to cock its head at him with clear curiosity. "Yeah, you don't have to worry about slag like this," Rodimus sighed. "You've got a simple life." The turbofox shook its head at him, probably resetting the plating. Mechanimals tended to have weird overlapping plating that needed to be preened regularly to stop dirt and grime working its way underneath, and this cell wasn't exactly clean. The advantage was something to do with surface area for photovoltaics, but Roddy couldn't recall for sure. He hadn't exactly had a fancy education.

"I guess we just have to wait and see what happens," he said, mostly to himself.

As he crunched the last of the energon treats the blaring error signals from his fuel tank finally settled down to a more bearable level, and the heavy fog over his processor started to lift a little. The pulse of instinct which had been ruling him since he'd been forced into this form faded a little and he could actually think instead of simply reacting. The faint tremor running through his plating settled.

His optics worked differently in this form, or perhaps it was simply the change in perspective after so long wearing the Magnus armour. He blinked at the servo he had been eating out of and realised it was familiar. He sat back on his haunches, deeply uncomfortable with the strange nature of the movement with quadrupedal limbs, and regarded the mechs around him. He was certain his perception of colour was altered in this form, giving more primacy to shades in the infrared than he was used to. The shapes were familiar, but the plating was all wrong.

He realised the mech feeding him was Rung, and now with his processor actually _functioning_ he could see that the others were members of his crew as well. Rodimus had been the mech so keen on petting him.

Primus above, he had never wanted them to see him like this. Not that they recognised him, and they wouldn't have done so even if he had been in his root-mode. They only knew Ultra Magnus, who was offline now as far as they knew.

Why were they here? They must have followed a trail the armour left back to Luna-1, and run afoul of Tyrest.

He flinched a little at even thinking Tyrest's name, quite unintentionally. His alt showed displays of emotion far more than he liked, tail tucking down and audials flattening against his helm. He whined slightly, feeling the grate of torn metal in his throat. The medic here had welded him up so neatly nothing seemed to show externally, but he hadn't been so careful on the inside. His flank still ached every time he moved, and even the animalistic noises that were all he had left hurt to express.

"Hey buddy, what's wrong?" Rodimus asked, reaching out to pet him again. Minimus backed away from the reaching servo. He wasn't a mechanimal! He was a person! He just... he was just being punished like this for his failure, because something had gone deeply wrong with Tyrest since last they'd met.

He reached up to his throat and flinched again when claws scraped against his plating rather than digits, whining softly. He didn't want his friends to know exactly who he was but there _had_ to be a way to let them know he was more than some... some _pet._

"Maybe he's still hungry?" Tailgate suggested.

"I guess probably," Rodimus said. "He doesn't seem to like it when I try to touch him. Maybe his last master wasn't very nice."

"Maybe that's what Tyrest got him for," Chromedome said, his tone dark. "Mechanimal abuse."

"We should definitely take him with us when we get out of here," Rodimus said firmly. Minimus thumped his tail against the floor emphatically. _Yes_, get him away from Tyrest and turn him back! If he was able to spend a bit longer around the crew on the _Lost Light_ he would surely be able to find some way of telling them he was more than he appeared.

"If we get out of here," Brainstorm said.

"It's only gonna be a matter of time," Rodimus insisted.

Some time later the bodies of Skids and Swerve were dropped into their cell by teleporter. They proved to be in shallow stasis, but came around quickly without requiring the attentions of a medic. Minimus felt his audials perk up in interest as the two explained recent events from their perspective, filling in Rodimus and the others. His replacement was making himself busy it seemed.

"Hey, what's with the turbofox?" Swerve asked, after he'd finished his tale. "It's cute, but where did you find it?"

"Hiding in this cell," Rodimus said. "We think its owner ran afoul of Tyrest somehow. We're keeping it, obviously."

"Does it have a name?" Swerve asked. He held a servo out, and put on a tone that Minimus found immediately grating. "Do you have a name boy? You're such a cute lil'foxey. Who's a good fox?" Minimus decided the best way of managing _that_ kind of behaviour would be simply to ignore it. Hopefully Swerve would get the picture soon enough.

"I didn't really think about what to call him," Rodimus said. "It should be something badaft though, right? Like... Killer. Scrapper. Maybe... Shredder?"

"Those are all terrible names," Skids said, half-laughing even though he was still leaking energon in places from the stab-wounds littering his plating. Unable to stop himself growling at each potential indignity, Minimus heartily agreed.

"Well it's gotta be something cool," Rodimus complained. "I don't want it to be something awful like the name Sunstreaker gave to that Insecticon of his, what was it, 'Bob'?"

"What about Regnus?" Tailgate suggested. "That was a fairly common name for pet turbofoxes back in my time."

It... wasn't terrible. If this was going to happen, and Minimus didn't see much of a way out of it, Regnus was about the best he could hope for. He yapped, trying to make it sound enthusiastic.

"See, he likes it!" Tailgate said, pleasure obvious.

"It'll do," Rodimus said, shrugging. Whatever he might have been about to say next was interrupted by the sound of heavy pedesteps coming down the corridor. He had expected Legislators, but it was Star Sabre, dragging a cuffed mech along by a collar. Sabre glanced over at Minimus, who bared his dentae. Star Sabre was _not _an acceptable replacement to fill his role.

"I see you found the mutt," Star Saber noted, without much emotion.

"Is he yours?" Rodimus asked disdainfully. "Haven't you guys heard of feeding your pets, or is mechanimal welfare not particularly important to you?"

Star Sabre didn't reply, obviously disinterested in that line of conversation. Instead he dragged the bound mech a little closer. "I've brought your new cellmate," he said. "He's been smouldering in the variable voltage harness for a while now sleeping off his confession - waiting for his partner-in-crime to honour his promises."

Chromedome laid a hand on Skid's shoulder. "You need to see this," he said, and went on to talk about his mnemosurgery attempts, and that perhaps he had misinterpreted what he'd seen there. That this bot, Getaway, was in fact someone from Skid's past. Star Sabre ignored their conversation, loosened the collar from around the mech's neck, deactivated the force bars for a moment, and pushed him through.

The possibility of escape whirred through Minimus' processor for a moment, but he discarded it rapidly as a poor idea. He had nowhere to go, and Tyrest would recapture him eventually. It might also jeopardise his chances of leaving with Rodimus and the others. He wasn't about to under-estimate their capabilities. They had managed to get out of equally poor situations in the past.

The name Getaway was also vaguely familiar to him, something from Prowl's reports. Perhaps he would be the key to getting off Luna-1.

-2-

Getaway was indeed one of Prowl's, and judging from his story, Skids had been a part of Intelligence as well. Minimus listened with his audials pricked up and wondered whether the botched mission to force Tyrest out of his position had been part of what had driven him to such extremes. Once it had been an honour to serve the famous Judge, but... he still didn't know how to feel. There was betrayal, spark-deep hurt, but some part of him wondered whether he really had done something wrong. Something to deserve punishment. Tyrest would not have risen to the position he had if his judgement was not impeccable. The change in him made no sense.

He tried to pay attention to Getaway's story as best he could. He didn't want to think about such things. When the mech circled around to what Tyrest had told him during interrogation though, it was hard to avoid the implications. Tyrest wanted to kill the cold constructed. Minimus' audials went back instinctively at the thought. He was hardly the only one to react with disbelief and alarm, but nothing about Getaway's manner suggested he was lying. Not about that, or about this plan to reach Cyberutopia through a reconstructed titan spacebridge.

"So we blow up the killswitch," Rodimus said, "stop Tyrest, and then - hold tight 'cos here it comes - we go through the portal ourselves. Universe saved; quest over."

"Rodimus, deluded," Swerve replied. "Sorry Captain but like most plans involving freedom of movement your's is entirely dependent on _not being imprisoned_."

"Perhaps we could ask the guards to get a message to Ultra Magnus," Chromedome suggested. "We know he's here somewhere."

Minimus leapt up and start yapping as hard as he could. It was far from a perfect method of communication but it was all that he was capable of. He was _right here_, if only they could make some kind of a connection...

"What's with him?" Brainstorm asked. Rodimus frowned and crouched down.

"What's up boy?" he asked. "Something wrong?"

Something was very wrong, but as much as he tried to contort his throat nothing would come out except for whines and barks. Mechanimal noises. He gave up as it became clear that no-one was going to make the connection. Minimus refused to let himself despair. Perhaps repetition would be the key. If he could build up a _pattern_...

"Ultra Magnus?" Getaway asked, tilting his helm to the side. "He's the Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord isn't he? So he works for Tyrest, which isn't a good look right now, hmm. If he's working for Tyrest, then I reckon he wants you here. Might even have lured you here."

Minimus bristled. He found it was more literally than he was expecting when the plates along his spinal strut and the back of his helm lifted up, flaring aggressively. He growled. Getaway was not... precisely wrong. That was half the problem. He'd hoped Rodimus would receive a reprimand from Tyrest and learn a lesson about reckless behaviour, not... Not any of this. He hadn't intended _this_, and he resented the implication he would have approved of Tyrest's behaviour.

None of the mechs opened their mouths to defend him. That hurt as well, but from their point of view he had to admit that this all appeared very troubling.

"Anyway," Getaway continued, "you don't need a mech on the outside when you have me. I specialise in escapology."

"Then why haven't you gotten out of here already?" Swerve asked, clearly doubtful.

"I didn't have the right equipment," Getaway said, then set about proving that he was entirely capable of living up to his name.

There wasn't a question that he would leave the cell with Rodimus and the others. Minimus managed to avoid being scooped up and carried by Rodimus by a narrow margin, but once he saw that he seemed happy to follow the group Rodimus didn't try again. Good. He was perfectly capable of walking or running on his own, even if the movement was unfamiliar, and at first a little clumsy. He heard someone comment that he was 'a poor little fox that had been cooped up too long', and tried not to bare his teeth. That had sounded like Swerve. Who knew the mech was so soft-sparked for mechanimals?

Rodimus settled for carrying Tailgate instead, who seemed to be having some locomotor difficulties. They liberated the cannons from the now stasis-locked guard, and followed Getaway into the maze of the Luna-1 complex. Minimus wished he could be of some assistance in navigating, but he had never been to this location before until Tyrest had brought him, in stasis within the Magnus armour.

After a few breems Minimus' sensitive audials picked up pedesteps coming in their direction. He barked to alert the others to the potential danger, trying to communicate his alert with body language. He wasn't very practised at this, and wasn't sure if they understood anything he was trying to do. Blank stares met his gaze when he turned to look. Thankfully it was not Legislators that appeared from around the corner ahead, but Ratchet and First Aid, similarly armed with Legislator cannons. Both were liberally splattered with fresh energon. Minimus could smell it from here, sharp and unpleasant. Neither looked happy.

"Whoa, what happened to you two?" Rodimus asked, optics wide.

"Pharma's here," Ratchet said, almost growling himself. "Ambulon's dead. Pharma's doing."

"Oh," Rodimus said. "Ratchet, I'm so sor..."

Ratchet didn't give him a chance to finish. "Where have you been all this time? And what's with the 'fox?"

"In a cell," Rodimus replied, and jerked a digit at Minimus. "Found him there too. Couldn't exactly leave him. So, we were just on our way to stop Tyrest from murdering half our species..."

Ratchet gestured back the way they'd come with a jerk of his helm. "Something you ought to see first," he said grimly. When they turned into the adjoining corridor that thing turned out to be the Magnus armour, propped up against the wall, stiff and blank-opticed. Minimus froze, then leapt forwards towards it, yapping urgently. He jumped up and pawed at the leg of the armour then turned back to look at the others, hoping _this time_ would be the time they understood him. He even nuzzled the plating briefly, and tried to turn one of his forelegs enough to tap on his own chest - but of course they didn't bend that way.

"Is he... offline?" Rodimus asked, staring up at the armour's unmoving helm.

"I've scanned him and I'm not picking up signs of spark or processor activity," Ratchet said. "He might not have started to grey yet, but yes. It looks like whatever force brought him here, it wasn't his own will. That or Tyrest killed him shortly after arrival."

Or something none of them had any reason to consider, Minimus thought, and pawed desperately at the armour again.

"Curious," Perceptor said. "I am unfamiliar with mechanimal behaviours; why do you suppose the turbofox is doing that?"

"It's a pet breed isn't it," Ratchet said. "Probably used to being around mechs. I imagine it's wondering why none of us are helping him. Poor thing doesn't realise it's too late for that."

Minimus was not a mech given to particularly overblown displays of emotion, but his self-control was beginning to fray. He managed to choke back his reaction by reminding himself he could not be sure how it would express itself in this form. Perhaps simply as a wordless howl of frustration, and surely he was not so far gone as that?

"We need to find Tyrest," Rodimus said. His voice was firm, but Minimus believed he had come to know him well enough to detect a hint of suppressed emotion. The significance of that, he could not be sure of. He gave up on the Magnus armour and padded back over to join the rest of the group, likely looking as dejected as he felt.

"Funny thought," Tailgate said, breaking off from the whispered conversation he had been having with Ratchet. "You don't think it could be Magnus' pet turbofox do you?"

"I hope we would have noticed if Magnus was keeping a turbofox somewhere on the _Lost Light_," Rodimus replied.

"Could'a been keeping it here," Getaway suggested. "Maybe his boss was looking after it for him."

"Some boss," Rodimus muttered. "Given he either dragged his corpse half-way across the galaxy or killed him when he got here."

"He's called 'Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord' for a reason," Getaway said.

Uncomfortable silence followed. Minimus kept his plating slicked down tight to his frame and tried not to feel anything. He had practise at that. It shouldn't be as hard as it was.

Minimus did not miss the smirk Tyrest shot in his direction after they burst through the doors into the room that held the killswitch - and the spacebridge as well. He had a brief hope that he would decide to taunt him, rub his nasal sensors in what he had done to him and thus also reveal his identity to the crew. Tyrest said nothing however. The satisfaction of keeping Minimus' true nature secret apparently held more pleasure for him than gloating. On the other servo he was more than happy to gloat to the rest of the mechs, particularly once the device in his staff had rendered them all collapsed on the floor and unable to move.

Minimus concentrated hard and tried to fight against the suggestion, but he had no more luck than anyone else. He could only stare and grind his dentae together as Tyrest pulled the killswitch and activated the spacebridge, walking towards the wall of swirling blue-white light that burst into being within the bounds of the ramshackle circle. It couldn't end like this. They couldn't lose like this.

It was Tailgate who saved them. Somehow unaffected, he leapt at Tyrest, distracting him just long enough to deactivate the suggestion device on his staff. Minimus jumped upright and lunged, snarling. His jaws fastened around Tyrest's arm as he grabbed at Tailgate, dentae sinking deep. Tyrest yelped and tried to shake him off, dropping Tailgate onto the floor. Minimus held on as best he could, but Tyrest managed to pry him free and throw him half-way across the room.

"How dare you..." Tyrest began, before Rodimus raised the machine gun and nearly tore him in half across the waist in a hail of bullets.

"Shut the frag up," Rodimus snarled. "Nobody wants to hear it."

Tyrest didn't move, offline or simply stasis-locked. Ratchet immediately went for Brainstorm and Chromedome, and Skids was making sure Pharma was taken prisoner. Minimus pushed himself onto his paws again, shaking himself. Nothing seemed to be too injured, or at least not more injured than he had been before. The portal was still open. Still swirling. The energies it was throwing off were hard to look at with these optics.

Perceptor was fussing around near the killswitch, pulling out tangles of wires and switching them around with near-reckless haste. Sparks dripped around his digits; they must have been burning him but he showed no sign of it on his faceplates. "Rodimus, get over here," he said anxiously. "I need you for this."

Rodimus dragged himself to his pedes and went over to talk to Perceptor. Minimus sat on his haunches in the middle of the chaos and felt utterly useless. What sort of help could he be here? He couldn't offer the comfort of words when he couldn't talk. He couldn't offer an extra set of servos for Perceptor's efforts. He wasn't going to be much use if the Legislators discovered what they were doing or Star Sabre returned from wherever he had gotten off to. Even as the Irreducible Minimus he could have done something, but like this...

"Hey." The voice was Swerve's, coming over to sit on the floor next to him. He reached out and laid a servo on the top of Minimus' head, and weary as he was, Minimus let him. There was something soothing about the physical contact he supposed. "You're a brave turbofox aren't you, going for Tyrest like that. You're a good 'fox, yes you are. A very good fox."

Minimus lay down and put his head in his paws. He couldn't live like this. It was simply too humiliating.

-3-

Killing Tyrest and deactivating the killswitch should have been the end of it. The sacrifice Rodimus had been prepared to make should have been enough. In the end it wasn't quite so simple. Legislators came pouring down upon them. Pharma escaped his bonds, then died, then disappeared. Minimus spent too much time dodging pedes and biting whatever parts of their enemies he could reach to have much effect on the final outcome, but in a way he did have some indirect effect on things.

Tailgate was the one to save all of their sparks. He realised the imperative that the Legislators were following of his own accord, and used the knowledge of the law which Ultra Magnus had spent long cycles teaching him to alter the database still open on Tyrest's computer. The drones ground to a halt without anyone taking severe injuries. Pride swelled in Minimus' spark. Tailgate had done well to keep at his lessons despite his obvious boredom, and this was proof that he had been paying genuine attention rather than simple lip-service.

Exhaustion was starting to take over Minimus' processor by the time they were ready to return to the _Lost Light_. He had been dangerously low on fuel before this, and the fast-burning processed energon of Rung's treats hadn't topped his tank up that much. He sluggishness was noticed by Swerve who actually picked him up and carried him, no small task considering that he was a minibot himself. Minimus was too tired to resist. He gave into the siren call of shuttered optics, and fell into a light recharge lulled by the swinging motion of Swerve's gait.

"So I guess Magnus really _is_ dead then," someone said. The words filtered down to his processor and he twitched up out of recharge briefly. He shouldn't let them go on believing that. It wasn't true, and if they thought it was they would never look for him. They wouldn't realise...

His fuel tank was starting to ping him insistent messages again. He had to conserve power. If he didn't recharge his self-preservation systems would start shutting down higher-processor functions again. That had been... deeply unpleasant.

He could try to correct them later. There were datapads on the ship. Terminals... he would find a way...

Recharge was deeper this time, if not quite as restful as he might have hoped.

_Tyrest sneered down at him. Minimus was on his knees before a bot he'd _thought _he admired, clutching the empty helm of the Magnus armour to him. Scattered pieces of the identity he had been wearing for vorns littered the floor around him. His spark ached from the sudden violent removal; the suit torn from him rather than willingly disengaged. He felt tender and terribly exposed. It had been... he could not even be sure how long... since he had last been Minimus Ambus. He wasn't sure who he was anymore outside of Ultra Magnus - Tyrest had shattered his life along with the armour._

_"For a long time I thought you were worthy of that armour," Tyrest told him. "Worthy of upholding the law despite what you are." Something about the way he said it made Minimus look up at him. "Did you believe I was unaware?" Tyrest asked him, raising an orbital ridge. "Did you think I didn't know?"_

_"Know... what?" His processor was still whirling, caught up in the disintegration of his life._

_"About your alt-mode," Tyrest said. The sneer was back. The look of disgust. Minimus quailed beneath it, still almost confused... or, no. Not confused. Just unable to believe it. Tyrest was the Law. He was above the prejudices of their race, deep ingrained as they ran in so many bots._

_Tyrest motioned to a pair of the Legislators standing by the wall, and they stepped forward to grasp Minimus by the arms. He struggled for a moment to get free but they were much bigger than him, and in this form his strength was far diminished._

_"I thought, why not give the beast a chance," Tyrest continued. "Let him prove he can rise above his nature; his brother managed to do so well enough. Yet apparently in the end you were simply... not up to the task. You're laughable. You made Magnus laughable."_

_"I... that's not..." He stammered over the words, unsure how he could justify himself. Yes he had been struggling in the aftermath of the war, yes he had found the _Lost Light _a difficult environment, yes perhaps there had been times when he hadn't been all he wanted to be but there had always been circumstances..._

_The excuses died on his glossa. Excuses weren't enough._

_"Strip him down," Tyrest ordered. "Don't let him hide what he really is anymore."_

_"Wait!" Minimus shouted, but the Legislators had already started in on him. They were not gentle. That had not been ordered. If he had been permitted then Minimus could have shed the armour himself but apparently that was not what Tyrest wanted. He wanted to see him suffer._

_Blunt digits dug into the edges of plating, buckling metal, and pulled. Armour came off in strips, dangling neural connectors, energon lines, stray sparking wires... Minimus screamed and felt the warm slick of fresh energon start sheeting down what plating remained. The Legislators kept digging, pulling. They fastened onto internal struts and jerked, tearing apart the subsidiary organs that kept the armour functional. Minimus felt his optics fritz and fall offline as energon stopped flowing to them. The engine of his minesweeper alt stuttered to a halt and left a horrible silence in the air, though one which was quickly overlayed with the shriek of tortured metal._

_The suit that was Minimus Ambus shredded apart around him, until the Legislators could pull him free, slick with energon like a horrific parody of an organic birth. He sprawled on the floor with his fans whirring in agony, his Irreducible self._

_At the edge of his sensors, Tyrest made a sound of disgust. "Take him to Pharma," he said. "If he's going to prance and fawn at the commands of criminals let him do it as the mechanimal he is."_

_Minimus tried to open his mouth to object but he could only make muted noises of pain. Servos grasped him again and he thrashed weakly. He was finding it hard to think as all of his systems screamed error warnings at him, but he had caught the name Pharma and knew nothing good could come of that._

He twitched awake with his motors whirring hard, spooling up ready to run or fight. A gentle servo was running down his spinal strut and someone was muttering soothing nonsense into his audials. He tried to calm down, banish the memory from his processor. That was not so easy. It was still so fresh. Nor had that been the end of the pain...

"Rodimus, I think something really bad must have happened to him." That was Swerve. He'd fallen into recharge with the minibot still holding him. "He was really upset."

"I'm sure you're right," Rodimus replied, his tone dark, disgusted. Minimus wriggled in Swerve's servos, despite knowing he was still low on fuel. There was a reason he'd been recharging, after all. Still he refused to be treated like a terrified mechanimal. _That's what they think you are though_, he thought to himself. It was intolerable.

They were back on the _Lost Light_, he saw. Rodimus was in poor condition, obviously injured. He'd seen that before, but with the Legislators attacking and in the chaos of leaving he hadn't quite realised how badly. His paint had bubbled and burnt off in dozens of places, and some of his plating rattled as he walked. He was holding some of it on with his servos, and there were gaps down to his internals where he had already lost parts of it. Yet he hadn't complained or said anything about it.

Minimus found himself whining slightly in distress. It was his fault that Rodimus had gone to Luna 1. In a way maybe it was his fault that Tyrest had gone so off-kilter; maybe if he had been more rigorous about checking in he might have noticed himself that something wasn't right. The killswitch should never have been built, and Rodimus should never have needed to take the chance of dying to stop it.

"Hey Regnus," Rodimus said, noticing his attention, and smiling. "It's all good. We're all good."

Minimus would have to disagree with that statement, not that he had any way of expressing it.

"You should get to the medical bay," Swerve said. "I'll take Regnus to my bar and get him something to eat."

"You better not be planning to feed that fox engex," Ratchet said. He had taken over the duty of carrying Tailgate. It was odd, because Minimus hadn't seen him be injured - and this had started before the fight, when they were back in the cell. What was going on there?

"Of course I wouldn't!" Swerve said, looking hurt. "I've got plenty mid-grade... for when I need to cut bots off of course."

"Yeah, and not for diluting the drinks down or anything," Brainstorm muttered. Swerve ignored that comment.

"C'mon Regnus," he said, "ignore these idiots. They don't have any idea how to take care of a mechanimal. Let's get you fueled."

Lapping energon from a bowl on the floor was unsanitary and humiliating, but Minimus wasn't going to refuse good fuel. His tank wasn't large in this form, and was meant to rely on steady refilling from the photovoltaic cells that lined his plating. Heavy activity or the demands of self-repair could drain it frighteningly fast. When his tank pinged that it was full he sat back on his haunches and fastidiously licked his muzzle clean with his glossa - longer in his alt than in his root mode.

Swerve was distracted by other customers. Minimus glared up at the various mechs occupying the bar. He had permitted Swerve's to keep operating because it allowed him to keep an eye on the troublemakers who would otherwise have been stealing supplies to construct an illicit still somewhere on board - he _had_ served with the Wreckers in the past. He knew more than most might expect about how to brew engex from a wide variety of subpar ingredients. That did not mean he approved, or wished to see behaviour that contravened the Autobot Code when he couldn't do anything about.

He supposed he could chase these offenders around yapping at them, but firstly it would simply be embarrassing, and secondly they would probably just assume he was reacting to the smell of engex and wouldn't respond in a way that would preserve his dignity. So no, he would not be pursuing that course of action.

There had to be a better way to communicate his identity. Perhaps he could find something in his quarters? He padded across the room to the door, then felt his plating lift in irritation when it failed to pick up his presence and stayed firmly closed. He looked around for someone who might be leaving the bar soon. There; Huffer was heading this way, stumbling slightly from the effects of engex intoxication. Minimus waited and slipped out after him, then trotted away through the corridors.

It was strange navigating from this height. As Magnus everything looked very different. It was hard to forget the basic layout of the ship however, and he quickly made it to his room. He paused outside, looking up at the access panel and wondering how he was going to manage this. Could he jump? Perhaps, but that would not give him time to input the access code. Ideally he needed something to climb up. Looking around though, nothing came to processor. He disliked clutter, and the corridors outside of his quarters were bare and empty to match his preference.

Perhaps this wasn't the best plan.

What might be more successful? If he could find an unattended datapad... or perhaps take a chance of going straight to the bridge and trying to write on one of the terminals there. There would be chairs he could use to reach the required height. Surely that kind of behaviour would be remarkable enough that someone would consider the possibility that he was no simple mechanimal?

Yes, he would try that next. It had to work.

-4-

Minimus ran into a familiar problem when he reached the bridge. The door wouldn't open for him. He growled, irritated at himself. Naturally all of the doors on the _Lost Light_ ran the same kind of automatic opening software, and the bridge-door itself was manually operated as a minor level of environmental security. He was no more able to reach the code-pad here than he had been in Swerve's. He also had no reference point for the passage of time, and therefore no way of telling how close it was to a shift change. Perhaps when one came he could slip into the bridge with the arriving mechs.

What was the most logical thing to do now? He did not want to take the chance of going somewhere else and missing the right opportunity. Equally he did not particularly relish the idea of remaining here in the corridor for however many cycles it took for said opportunity to arrive. Still there wasn't much of a choice. He sat down on his haunches, then after a few moments, settled down to lie on his belly. Limbs tucked in to conserve thermal energy, he felt comfortable enough. He could have risked a brief recharge had that been necessary, but given how recently he had refuelled he didn't feel the need. Besides, he didn't wish to experience again the kind of memory-flux he'd had during that most recent recharge.

Minimus had never minded periods of quiet contemplation. He didn't find silence 'dull' or 'boring' as Rodimus so often complained. There was always something that one could do to pass the time, even if it was carried out internally. He personally enjoyed mathematical exercises, or running legal simulations of his own devising. It had been... quite some number of deci-vorns since he had last been required to argue any kind of position before a court of law, since as Enforcer of the Accord he himself had been that court. He needed some method for keeping his skills from rusting.

He occupied himself for several cycles in that manner before he admitted to himself that he was growing anxious. He could hear the occasional sound of movement from inside the bridge - the clang of pedes, the low murmur of conversation - but no-one had come in or out. Perhaps they were right in the middle of a shift?

Was there anything else he could do to communicate? Anything else he could think of? Minimus spent a few breems wracking his processor before his optics flickered to the dull metal surface of the wall with its coat of protective paint. No. No he couldn't possibly. Defacing the ship would be an act of vandalism that he simply couldn't countenance.

No, somebody would be along eventually, and then he could do this in a civilised manner.

"Thanks doc," Rodimus said, rotating his arm through a full range of movement to make sure that nothing fell off this time. That had been... unpleasant. Parts of your body falling off generally were.

"Don't call me that," Ratchet said, wiping off his soldering iron and putting it away neatly in one of the medbay drawers. "Now don't stress those welds, and come see me after your shift. I'll have prepared some energon additives for you by then. Self-repair should take care of whatever damage is left."

"I'll be good," Rodimus lied, grinning. It wasn't really an _intentional_ lie. He just knew there was bound to be something that came up which needed his personal attention, some new wacky happenstance like all the others which had made their journey interesting so far.

"Sure you will," Ratchet said, with the face of a mech who'd heard that from Rodimus too many times before.

Rodimus didn't stick around due to the high chance of being threatened with a wrench to make him behave. Besides, he was needed on the bridge. They couldn't have their captain taking too much time off in medbay. There was too much to do, quest stuff to focus on and the like.

Besides which there was... that other matter. The Overlord thing. That he was going to come clean about.

After Luna-1 it just seemed the thing to do.

Anyway if the crew knew that it was really his fault then they could get Drift to come back to the ship. If Rodimus could find out where he'd gone. If he answered Roddy's comm call. If he actually _wanted_ to come back, which he... might not. Taking the fall might have been the last straw. There certainly didn't seem to be any _good_ reason that Drift would still want to be his friend.

Focused on his own thoughts so much, Rodimus almost tripped over the turbofox lying in the hallway. Only the flash of bright colour out of the corner of his optics made him stop.

"Regnus?" Rodimus asked, looking down at the 'fox folded up into a little sphere of plating with a head and tail. "Why on earth... how did you get away from Swerve? He was supposed to be looking after you!" Rodimus felt himself starting to get angry. What kind of mechanimal-lover did Swerve think he was if he couldn't even keep an optic on a turbofox he was meant to be feeding.

Regnus unfolded, stood up, and looked at Rodimus with his head cocked to one side. He was frankly adorable. "I'm not annoyed at _you_," Rodimus said, then vented out. It wasn't like Regnus could understand him. Given what he suspected of the pet's previous owner he would have to be careful of his tone. It might be some time before Regnus even bonded with him enough to allow himself to be petted.

He couldn't leave the mechanimal out here alone anyway.

"C'mon," he said, patting the side of his thigh, hoping someone had taught the turbofox to heel in the past. He punched in his code and entered the bridge with Regnus trotting obediently right alongside him. Once inside however, the 'fox broke away, interest clearly caught by all the unfamiliar mechs and strange surroundings. Regnus sniffed at an empty chair next to where Blaster was managing the comms by himself, like he preferred to do the stubborn glitch, before the turbofox executed an elegant leap up into the chair itself. The whole bridge turned to look.

"Where'd you get this handsome creature?" Blaster asked, turning in his chair to stare at Regnus, who seemed to be judging the distance between the chair and the lip of the console.

"Luna-1," Rodimus replied, shrugging. "Hey don't crowd him though, okay? We don't think he's been well-treated in the past."

"Who would mistreat such a lovely mechanimal," Blaster said, starting to put a servo out.

"Watch it," Rodimus warned him. "You might lose a digit that way. Regnus isn't so keen on touch."

"Did you really name it something so... _banal_... as Regnus?" That comment was from Mirage.

"_Apparently_ nobody liked my other names," Rodimus said, irritated. "What would _you_ have gone for anyway?"

"Oh I don't know," Mirage replied. "Something a little less... _déclassé_."

"Did you ever keep a turbofox?" Powerglide asked. "A sleek creature like that... only a noble could afford it." He was right. Most of the native mechanimals of Cybertron had died out some time before the Golden Age for one reason or another - mostly loss of their natural territory. Those that were left lived in zoos or the towers and residences of Cybertron's upper class. The first time Rodimus had ever seen a turbofox was off-planet - the only place healthy wild populations had survived.

"Only for hunting," Mirage said, shrugging. He rolled his optics at the gasps of shock that statement prompted. Rodimus hadn't, but he'd wanted to. What kind of wasteful... "Oh don't all look so surprised," Mirage told them. "It was a sport like any other. Kinder in many ways than _some_ of Cybertron's popular entertainment. How many of _you_ watched the fights out of Tarn and Kaon? At least this way I got a rather nice cloak out of it."

"You better leave Regnus alone, that's all," Rodimus said firmly, then turned to check on the 'fox. Regnus was on top of the console now, unmoving, plating and audials flattened tight down to his body and teeth bared in Mirage's direction.

"Oh please," Mirage said. "Look at the feral little thing. I'm not touching it with a twenty-metron pole."

"Hey," Rodimus said disapprovingly, and went over to try and soothe Regnus. Had it been something in Mirage's tone that set him off? Were turbofoxes smart enough to recognise a few words? He supposed they responded to their names, and simple commands like 'sit' or 'shake', so surely they must. Perhaps it had been 'hunting', although really who knew.

Seeing him approach, Regnus shook himself all over, and seemed to settle out of his aggressive stance. He padded across the desk towards Blaster's untended keyboard and started to paw at it. Rodimus laughed.

"You reckon he's trying to tell you something?" he asked Blaster, grinning.

"That'd be a neat trick," Blaster replied, with his own smile. He grabbed Regnus around the middle and lifted him off the desk. "Down you go boy," he said, ignoring Regnus' irritated yaps. "Better get back to work and stop letting you distract us all huh?"

"Yeah, on that front," Rodimus said, looking down at the deck. "I have... um. Something of an announcement to make."

Rodimus had done _what_? Minimus could barely focus on the disaster his attempt at typing had been in the face of his utter astonishment. Just when he thought he had come to terms with Rodimus' bad decisions he confessed to something like _this_. Smuggling Overlord on board, hiding it from most of the crew including his own second-in-command, and failing to take any kind of responsibility for the consequences of his actions until this moment. He had even allowed someone else to take the fall for him - or perhaps forced him into it. Drift's affection for their Captain had never been much of a secret, after all.

Rodimus stood in the centre of the bridge with all optics on him, visibly wilting under the attention.

"So I understand that mechs are going to be angry about this," he said. "It was... I shouldn't have let Prowl talk me into it. That's why I'm apologising now. I thought I should give the crew a choice, anyway. About what happens next. After everything that wasn't what you signed up for... you deserve to get a chance to make your opinions known."

"What exactly were you thinking of?" Blaster asked.

"A vote," Rodimus replied. "On whether you still want me as your Captain. You think you could get that set up?"

Blaster nodded. "I take it you'll want to do some kind of ship-wide broadcast?"

"Yeah," Rodimus said. "Just basically tell them exactly what I just told you."

"I can pull the audio from the security cameras," Blaster said. "I'll put something together, let you okay it before it goes out."

Rodimus nodded. He went over to almost collapse down into the Captain's chair. "I'll just... wait for you to do that," he said. The rest of the bridge crew looked around at each other. This was shaping up to be one of the more awkward shifts Minimus had ever witnessed, and he was glad he didn't have to work through it. If he had still been in the armour how would he have responded to this?

Demanded Rodimus explain his reasoning, most likely. For all the good that would do either of them.

He couldn't ask anything trapped like this. A quick analysis told him Blaster wasn't likely to let him near his console again while he still had work to do, and there were no other consoles active that would be easy for him to reach and access. It looked like he was stuck here on the bridge until Rodimus left at the end of his shift.

Minimus curled up on the deck underneath Blaster's desk and activated his waiting protocols again. He would make another attempt to communicate when he got the chance.


	2. Chapter 2

-5-

Minimus continued with his attempts to communicate throughout the business of the vote and its aftermath, with no more luck than any of his previous attempts. He had little personal experience with mechanimals and he was irritated to discover that pets jumping up on desks and attempting to play with electronic equipment was some kind of expected phenomenon, rather than a signal that something was deeply wrong here. He had spent some time thinking about the walls again and trying to steel himself against the idea of the necessity of vandalism. He had just about managed to talk himself into trying it when the comms station console exploded into blaring noise. He was sure that his plating almost levitated off his body with the sudden shock, but he was hardly the only one on the bridge to react similarly to the alarm.

After slapping at the console controls for what felt like far too long, Blaster finally managed to get the sound under control and out of the realm of physical pain into something that could actually be analysed and absorbed by audials. The signal was degraded by static and some words lost, but the gist of it could be made out clearly.

"Autobots... in trouble... exploding planet... we are at the point of no return. Keep away and do not engage... do not... rescue... repeat... make no... rescue us."

He knew that voice! That was Optimus... or Orion Pax, as he would rather be known now. He was in trouble! Minimus looked around the bridge, suddenly frantic, knowing that he would not be able to forgive himself if he did not somehow persuade the crew that they needed to act. Optimus was one of Ultra Magnus' oldest friends, a friendship that had passed from servo to servo as each new inhabitant of the armour took up the role...

"What are we going to do?" Blaster asked, and Minimus took in the expression on Rodimus' face and started to relax. He should have known that Rodimus would always choose the risky and exciting option when faced with any choice.

"You heard the Prime," Rodimus said, grinning. "We've got to rescue him."

"Uh, I don't think that's what he was saying..." somebody said, but Rodimus was paying no attention.

"Set course to jump to the origin of that signal," he ordered. "I've got a welcoming committee to organise."

Minimus jumped down from the chair he'd been placed into after his most recent communication attempt, trotting over to follow at Rodimus' pedes as he made to leave the bridge. Rodimus looked down at him and raised an orbital ridge.

"You wanna come too, don't you Regnus?" he said. "I totally agree. Optimus has _got_ to meet you. You're too cute. He's going to _need_ to pet you, and then I can get Rewind to record rare footage of Prime acting like a person for once."

Minimus stuck his snout in the air in disgust. Optimus would not try to pet him. It was still beneath Minimus' dignity, and he would not allow it even if Optimus had been the kind of mech to try, which he was not. He wanted to see Optimus though and make sure that he was safe. Whatever kind of danger he had encountered appeared to be serious.

Rodimus rounded up a group of the crew and headed down to the hangar bay as Minimus felt the unmistakable sensation of the universe shuddering around them through a quantum jump. The entirety of the _Lost Light_ vibrated as it was battered by unknown forces, likely whatever planetary danger Optimus' signal had intended to warn of. The ship held through it, and then they were in the hangar with the doors gaping open to swallow a large blue and purple shuttle.

The shuttle settled down on the deck plating, and moments later the roof hatch opened up as Optimus climbed out.

"I never doubted for a second," Optimus said, his gaze panning over them all, "but I have to admit I'm glad to see you alive and well old friends!" An elegant jump for a bot his size brought him down onto the decking while the actual exit ramp of the shuttle hissed open somewhere to the rear. A sudden uncertain look came over his faceplates. "But... is Ultra Magnus otherwise occupied? I expected to see him here with you..."

Whatever Rodimus had been about to say fell flat in the face of that question. A solemn quiet fell over the hanger, and Minimus saw his chance. He wound his way between the forest of pedes and burst out into the open space between Rodimus and Orion, yapping loudly. He dug his claws into the metal underpede and did his best to start carving the first glyph of his name.

"Oh whoa, frag, sorry Orion," Rodimus said, and Minimus felt servos wrap around his waist lifting him up. He found himself being clasped to Rodimus' chest tightly, and no matter how much he wriggled to get free he was unable to do so.

Orion looked down at Minimus with puzzlement. "You have acquired a pet?"

"Yeah." Rodimus laughed nervously. "He's not usually... like that. No, uh, to answer your question. About Magnus." He fell silent. Pressed as close as he was, Minimus could almost imagine that he could feel the thrum of Rodimus' spark through his plating. It was uncomfortably intimate.

"Rodimus," Orion said, exasperated, as the silence dragged on.

"He's dead." Rodimus said finally.

The two words hit Orion almost like a physical blow. Minimus saw him actually rock back on his pedes as he struggled to take it in, his optics wide. Minimus couldn't help from whining softly. It hurt to see Optimus so affected by something that wasn't even true. He was still here! Still alive! Just not in a form that anyone who knew Ultra Magnus would ever recognise.

Even if he could find a way to tell them, what about afterwards? Even if he proved he was a beastformer rather than a mechanimal, would they even believe him when he claimed to be Ultra Magnus? _He _would not have believed himself, absent evidence. What evidence could he show? He didn't know what had happened to the Magnus armour after Luna-1. Tyrest was dead. His systems had been wiped by Tailgate - admittedly to save all their sparks. Would they even give him the chance to prove himself?

No, he couldn't let himself think like that. Things could still go back to normal. He had to believe it.

Orion cleared his intakes, a harsh sound. "Ultra Magnus is dead?"

Rodimus nodded. "Overlord."

"Overlord was meant to be a prisoner on Cybertron," Orion said, frowning. "How did he escape?"

Minimus could _feel_ Rodimus cringing. That faint spark-thrum got noticeably faster. "That's... kind of a long story. Can I... tell you in private?"

"Tell me now," Orion said, his optics blazing.

Minimus could hear the hitch in Rodimus' venting, the slight increase in pitch of his fans. "Prowl wanted to study Overlord to make our own Phase Sixers. I assume you know about that. He wanted Chromedome to use mnemosurgery, and when he refused at first Prowl persuaded me we should bring Overlord along on board the _Lost Light_ in case Chromedome had second thoughts. Which he did... Anyway..." Orion's expression was giving nothing away. "Overlord escaped. And bots died. Including Ultra Magnus."

Orion took a few steps forward until he was standing directly in front of Rodimus, still silent, wordless. His sheer physical mass was intimidating; Minimus wasn't used to seeing him like this, experiencing him like this. He was used to an easy camaraderie, of being able to look down at Optimus even if only slightly. He had never felt _threatened_ by his friend before.

"You allowed this," Orion said quietly.

"Yeah, I messed up," Rodimus said. Minimus couldn't see his faceplates from here, and he suspected he didn't want to. There was an uncomfortably raw emotion in Rodimus' voice. "I know that Orion, I know I messed up. I had a vote, it was just a little while ago, to see if the crew still wanted me to be Captain and..."

"A vote." Orion's tone was flat. On the edge of angry, or perhaps just managing to hold anger back. "After your foolishness led to Ultra Magnus' death - my _friend's_ death - you had a _vote_ on whether you were still fit to lead this vessel."

"Well I mean, isn't it up to the crew whether they still want..."

Orion cut him off. "If you truly believed there was a chance of losing you wouldn't have called the vote." He leaned in and placed a servo on Rodimus' shoulder. Then he said, barely above a whisper, "You should have resigned."

Before Rodimus had a chance to react Orion stepped away and pushed past him, past the crowd gathered to welcome him, heading into the ship. From his shuttle some companions of his had emerged, and now they stared after him, obviously not knowing what to say. Rodimus clutched Minimus closer to himself, and made a low, hurt noise into the ruff of plating around Minimus' shoulders.

Minimus glanced back at the shuttle, recognising the beings standing next to it now he had a chance to look at them properly. Garnak, Wheelie and Hardhead. Old friends. "What was that all about?" Garnak asked, looking shocked.

"I think he needs a bit of alone time," Swerve said, his grin fixed and insincere. "Hey, welcome to the _Lost Light!_"

A lot happened in the cycles that followed Optimus coming on board, and Minimus was not party to most of it. As a mere mechanimal he was to be coddled and protected, not permitted to play an active role in stopping the dangers that had apparently arisen. Rodimus went off somewhere and left him locked up in his quarters, and he didn't even leave his console unlocked. A bit of digging around in drawers and beneath the berth turned up a couple of datapads which Minimus managed to turn on eventually, but his paws were not designed for the tiny keys and when he tried to type out a message it came out as nonsense no matter how much he deleted and re-wrote it.

It was a long wait, and he worried for all of it. There were several quantum jumps, and the walls shook faintly for a while in time with distant explosions. It was hard to know exactly how long he had been there for. Rodimus had left out energon for him, which had been thoughtful given the clear emotional turmoil from which he'd been suffering.

He did have time to work on the wall however. It was... difficult. To make the first mark into the paint. He drew back from it several times before pressing on. He was breaking a rule, making a mess of the pale protective paint. It felt wrong. But what other choice did he have? He scraped and clawed and tried to keep it as neat as his lack of servo dexterity would allow.

There. 'I am not a mechanimal'. What could be clearer than that? Minimus sat back on his haunches to critique his work. Admittedly he would need to draw Rodimus' attention to it since it was far lower than optic height, but surely...

Eventually the door slid open and Rodimus trudged inside. He looked more than the worse for wear with his plating streaked with battle damage and dirt and grime tracking up his legs from his pedes. Minimus barked from his place by the message, but Rodimus didn't even look over at him, heading straight for his berth and climbing onto it to lie face down. A drawn-out groan sounded from his vocaliser. Minimus put his audials back in a mixture of irritation and desperation. He _needed _Rodimus to see his words, even if it was clearly not the best time.

Minimus went over and fastened his dentae very gently around the servo Rodimus had left dangling down towards the floor, tugging slightly. Rodimus only grumbled and pulled his arm away. "Yeah, walks, I know," he mumbled. "You've been cooped up. But it's really going to have to wait."

Minimus growled, then started yapping. There was no response. When he stopped to listen, Rodimus' engine had settled into the gentle purr of a mech in recharge. Really? Despite the noise he was making, Rodimus had still managed to slip into recharge?

Frustrated beyond belief, Minimus sat down and stared at Rodimus. The moment his Captain woke up, he was going to _make him see_.

-6-

Rodimus was in recharge for a longer than average period. Minimus surmised he had gone without an adequate amount during the time he had spent off the _Lost Light_, dealing with whatever threat had menaced the universe on this particular occasion. Perhaps he would find out what that had been, when Rodimus saw his message and everyone realised who he really was. It was hard to sit and wait when the end of this horrible experience felt so close.

When Rodimus eventually did online his optics and push himself upright on his berth, it wasn't with the kind of exuberance that Minimus would have expected from him. He still looked... tired. Morose, even. "Hey Regnus," he said, seeing Minimus looking up at him. "Sorry we had to keep you cooped up in here, but I don't think I could have forgiven myself if you got hurt." He looked away and gave a soft, unhappy laugh. "Got lots of things I can't forgive myself for I guess. What'd be one more?"

Mininus whined. He had never seen Rodimus like this before, and it felt deeply wrong. His Captain was not meant to be... to be low and depressed, to sound defeated, to sound _guilty_. Although Primus knew he had wished many times that Rodimus was less foolhardy and excitable, he would never have wanted him to be... whatever this was.

Was this about Optimus? What he had said? Minimus was not used to that side of his old friend either, and it had disturbed him even at the time, but he had expected Rodimus to simply shrug off the criticism with that typical brash self-confidence or at least with the understanding that Optimus was coming from a place of sorrow and grief and that he surely hadn't meant to be so harsh as _that_. But Rodimus hadn't said anything, and then Minimus had been shut up in this cabin and he had no idea if there had been any further fallout.

Had something else happened? It must have, surely. This couldn't _just_ be about Optimus.

Rodimus stood up, came over, and scooped Minimus up into his arms. Minimus didn't try and wriggle free, too surprised by the gesture. His intention of drawing Rodimus' attention to the message he'd carved into the wall was entirely distracted by the slight tremor he could feel through Rodimus' plating.

"Sorry, I know you don't like being petted," Rodimus said, voice slightly muffled by the way he had his faceplates almost buried in Minimus' plating. "I just... I just really need this right now okay?"

Minimus kept still, feeling uncertain. Rodimus put his back against the wall and slid down until he was seated with Minimus propped up in the space between his bent legs and his chestplate. Rodimus kept on hugging him - Minimus had managed to classify the gesture now, although it was not one he had much experience with - and running his servos rhythmically over his sleek plating. Minimus let him do it. This was all... very strange, and he felt the urge to do _something _to make his Captain feel better. If that meant acting the part of a pet, well then, so be it. Just this once.

"I need to speak to someone about repairs for the ship," Rodimus said, speaking to himself. "And fuel, and supplies... and what's Optimus going to do? I know what he thinks but... the quest was my idea. The _Lost Light_ is my ship. I shouldn't have to... or maybe I should. He's got to be right, right? He's the Prime. I _am _useless, and irresponsible, and everyone that's dead is dead because of me. I don't deserve a second chance."

Minimus whined again. He had never heard Rodimus speak like this before, and it made something deep in his spark ache with every word. He tried to think of something he could do... if only he could speak surely he could reassure Rodimus that although he had his faults they were areas he could easily improve and certainly did not make him unfit material to be their Captain...

"You can hear how sad I sound, can't you Regnus," Rodimus said to him. "This... this is good though. This is helping."

Minimus put his head down on Rodimus' shoulder, nestling into his neck. The key principle here seemed to be close physical contact, so he would do his best to maximise that. Rodimus' petting continued for some time longer in silence. Eventually Rodimus vented out and straightened up.

"I guess I should go to work," he said, looking Magnus in the optics. "I'm bringing you with me though, and I don't care if you bark at Optimus again. He can just deal with it."

They left the room with Minimus still held in Rodimus' arms. There had been no chance to draw his attention to the message, but he could appreciate that given Rodimus' mood it was perhaps not the best time. That was fine. He could deal with that. He would show it to his Captain the next time the returned to his quarters to recharge, and perhaps things would have settled down by then.

At least he hoped so.

Rodimus had clearly planned a very busy day for himself. He was capable of a strong work ethic when he applied himself, but in this case Minimus wondered if it was born out of a desire to leave Cybertron again as soon as possible. The political situation here sounded even more complicated than when they had set out on their quest, from the gossip he overheard while Rodimus carried him around - gossip that was in direct contravention of Section 67 paragraph 12 of the Autobot Code. If only he had been able to reprimand them, but voiceless he had to settle for growling which failed to have any significant effect. The _Lost Light_ itself had clearly taken substantial damage to its outer plating and although the crew was hard at work fixing it, it was difficult to estimate how long that would take.

Aside from overseeing repairs Rodimus also stopped in at the engines and spent some time speaking to Perceptor, who gave his assurances that he was working on an equation that would return them to the area of space where the course of their quest had been interrupted. After that it was into Iacon itself to find a supplier to restock with energon and medical supplies, and then to an apparently requested meeting with Optimus Prime.

All throughout this Rodimus kept a hold of Minimus, carrying him in his arms and stroking along the line of his spinal strut from time to time. He was subject to a number of odd looks, but no-one questioned him on it. Indeed they tended to become distracted by Minimus himself. Several bots adopted the same saccharine tone that Swerve appeared so fond of and fussed over him. Rodimus mostly warned them off petting him, but Minimus had to show off sharp dentae at a few of the more persistent individuals.

Oddly this seemed to make Rodimus appear satisfied, although Minimus could not imagine why. He would have expected to be scolded as a pet who was not, it had to be said, very pettable. Yet Rodimus laughed it off and seemed to delight in being the only one that Minimus allowed to touch him. It was a kind of possessiveness that made Minimus wary. He was glad that it seemed to be helping his Captain's mood, but he did not want him to get too attached. If Rodimus was so in need of a mechanimal then they could buy him a real one. Minimus just wanted things to go back to normal, as soon as possible.

When they eventually arrived in one of Metroplex's towers to meet with Optimus, Minimus found that this was not the private meeting he had imagined. Ratchet, Prowl and _Starscream_ of all bots had joined him around a holotable - and was that Fortress Maximus loitering uncomfortably in the background there? Minimus sat up in Rodimus' arms to get a better look. He hadn't seen Max since... well, since Ultra Magnus' apparent 'death' fighting Overlord. He supposed he had acquitted himself well in that battle, but he was still uncomfortable with stating that made up for his attack on Rung and the other members of the crew.

"Why have you brought that _creature_ to a strategy meeting?" Optimus asked, gesturing to Minimus.

"Why not?" Rodimus asked. His voice was flatter than it had been all day. Closer to that dull tone Minimus had heard from him that morning.

"It is hardly appropriate..." Optimus began.

"Oh, let him," Ratchet said. "Poor thing's been cooped up in Rodimus' cabin for cycles while we dealt with Shockwave's mess. It'll do it good to get some fresh air."

Optimus' engines gave a low rumble, but he nodded and said, "Very well. We have more vital business to discuss."

"Yeah, you never said what this was about," Rodimus said, sounding a little brighter. "The _Lost Light_ needs a bunch of work done to it, so I'll need to get back..."

"Before you go anywhere we need to decide what to do about Megatron."

Minimus put his audials back in shock. Megatron? The last he knew of it Megaton was dead. Offlined during the battle that had remade Cybertron anew. He supposed given the mech's history it should not be so great a surprise that he had survived, that he had returned. What had the warlord been up to?

"My people want a trial," Starscream said, arms folded tightly across his chest.

"What's the point?" Rodimus asked, rolling his optics. "We all know he's guilty."

Minimus growled. He couldn't help it. Yes some part of him agreed with Rodimus, but this was a matter of the law. Any bot, _anyone_, was entitled to a fair trial in a court of law, with representation, and due process. To suggest doing otherwise was to go against the very principles he had always stood for - and the principles the Autobots were founded upon besides.

Around him the others were arguing over the matter. He was not surprised to hear Prowl trying to make a case for a swift and simple execution. Ever the pragmatist, Prowl had never cared for the minutiae of the law - or of any kind of ethical code as the war went on - unless it had some practical use to him. Ratchet sounded less decided, and Rodimus was more focused on arguing with Starscream - who was apparently _in charge_ here. The circumstances that had led to that must be unusual ones.

"The people will get their trial," Optimus said, cutting through the noise. "Secrecy will only reinforce suspicion that we operate outside the law. Given the news of Chief Justice Tyrest's death, I shall sit in judgement."

"You realise that makes this a military trial," Starscream objected.

"Yeah, not really sure if a military trial passes your transparency test," Ratchet said.

"There is precedent," Optimus replied, and Minimus automatically pulled it up in his own memory banks. He kept a voluminous amount of Cybertronian case law in his personal archives for just such occasions as this. Phobos. Desecrus. Two cases was not substantial, but would be enough for these purposes.

"Prowl, I appoint you as principle prosecutor," Optimus continued. "However Megatron will need someone to advocate on his behalf, who knows the law well. I would have nominated Ultra Magnus for the task..." He looked over at Rodimus, who shrank back slightly in the light of that baleful glare. "However since he has rejoined the light of Primus, I propose that Fortress Maximus takes his place."

Prowl's optics narrowed. "Sounds to me like you had already made your decision before this meeting," he said. "Why else ask Max to attend."

"My decision depended upon the arguments made by those of you attending," Optimus said. "Since none of you could give me an argument better than Starscream's, I bow to his wishes which, as he says, are those of the people."

Starscream looked astonished, but covered it up quickly. It was clear he had not been expecting Optimus to say anything like that.

"Thank you for your consideration Optimus," Fortress Maximus said, approaching the table looking nervous. "This is a grave responsibility, and one I will do my best to live up to."

"Rodimus told me you were willing to take up the mantle of Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord in the wake of Magnus' death," Optimus said, putting a servo on Max's shoulder. Minimus sat bolt upright, biting down whatever animal noise was sure to have emerged from his processor. That title was still his! Or... it should be. Tyrest might have stripped it from him, but he had not been in his right mind when doing so. It should not have been binding...

No, it wasn't really about that. It was just another piece of proof that everyone believed him to be dead. Another sharpened fastener in the coffin, as the humans said. He huddled down in Rodimus's arms miserably.

"I am certain you will do a job to make Magnus proud," Optimus said to Max.

Minimus should have been wishing for the same, but all he could feel was heavy and broken down to his spark.

-7-

Optimus seemed keen to hold the trial as quickly as possible. When it came to such a significant political prisoner as Megatron, Minimus could understand his reasoning, but it had to be putting a lot of pressure on both Prowl and Fortress Maximus to prepare their arguments and evidence. Well, he could only guess about the former, but he _knew _the latter was stressed because he had cornered Rodimus after that first meeting with Optimus and asked him for his help.

"I'm badly out of date on civilian trial law," Max said, pulling Rodimus into a side corridor, Minimus still in his arms. "There wasn't exactly a lot of call for it on Garrus-9."

"Oh hey, you said the name without looking like you were gonna pass out," Rodimus said, managing to juggle holding Minimus enough to pat Max on the arm. "Well done big guy."

"Thank you. I just need someone to help me sort through the datapads I have," Max said. "It's all Ultra Magnus' old stash. He brought it on board when he joined the _Lost Light_ as a reference library, not that anyone ever used it. Not even him - _he _didn't need to." Max's optics flared momentarily. "There's a filing system, all you would have to do would be to go through it with me and look for the right keywords."

"Okay," Rodimus said slowly. "I'm thinking about it. What keywords, exactly?"

Max did not look happy. "I'm sure we will work that out after a little while," he said.

Minimus whined softly. He had a very clear and appropriate filing system, thank _you_. It wasn't his fault that Max was struggling here... except in a way maybe it was. If he hadn't started to lose his own edge, given Tyrest a reason to doubt him, he would still _be _Ultra Magnus. He shook himself internally. No, he wasn't going to think like that. Tyrest would have found something, some excuse, spurred on by the grip of whatever insanity had taken him.

"So why are you even bothering to try?" Rodimus said. "It's only Megatron. He hardly deserves your best, Pit, he hardly deserves your worst! Just turn up and look cool in front of the crowd and let Prowl do his work."

Fortress Maximus drew himself up. "I couldn't do something like that sir," he said coldly, and for a moment Minimus saw the ghost of himself. "This is a matter of the law. If I didn't try my hardest, I would be letting down the memory of Ultra Magnus." Yet again Minimus wished for his voice. He should be able to reassure Max, but he couldn't.

Rodimus looked away. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I guess I get that. Okay yes, I'll help you."

"_Thank you_ sir." Max looked as though a weight had been taken off his shoulders. "Shall we return to the ship and get started?"

Things did not seem to be proceeding as they would have hoped. Minimus watched from on top of a table as Maximus and Rodimus sorted through datapads endlessly. With each new one they appeared more and more disheartened. In all honesty he had not remembered quite how many of the things he had brought on board; it was one thing when they were packed away in crates for transit, quite another when they were spread out over the surface of several tables, chairs and the floor. His seat up here had to be one of the few clear spots.

"This is useless," Rodimus groaned, throwing another datapad over his shoulder into the pile he had designated 'utterly boring and irrelevant'. Minimus winced as it landed with a clatter and slid onto the floor. "I don't understand half the words in here! Why do all these 'pads use so much Old Cybertronian? Why can't they just put things in plain, simple Neocybex?"

"That's simply the way the law is written," Max tried to explain, paging through his own pad and venting out. "That was the way mechs thought back before the war - if anyone could read it, it wouldn't be important. You had to be educated."

"Max, no-one ever called me educated. Are you sure I'm helping?"

"I think at least I've worked out what tags we should be looking for," Max said, sounding slightly desperate.

This was simply too painful for Minimus to watch. It had been clear to him early on in this process that they wouldn't be returning to Rodimus' quarters until the process was completed, or at least much closer on towards that goal. He wouldn't be able to show Rodimus the message, and if he started attempting to claw into the walls here, it would be taken as mechanimal frustration and he would not be permitted to get anywhere with it. Besides which it had been bad enough vandalising one wall of the ship. He shuddered to think about doing it to another.

No, the best way of both helping, and perhaps communicating that he was more than he seemed, was to give his assistance in finding the right datapad. He was fairly certain he recalled how he had packaged these archives...

"Regnus, what are you doing?" Rodimus said, as Minimus jumped down off the table and padded over to one of the crates. A calculated leap had him scrabbling up and over the edge of it, before dropping down inside. He turned around delicately on the stacked datapads, nosing at activation switches. Slag, this was more difficult than he had anticipated.

"Is your turbofox trying to eat datapads?" Max asked.

"_No_ he's not. He's just... I don't know what he's doing."

Not that one, not _that_ one... ah, there. Minimus nudged the pad on, confirmed that it was what he was looking for, and delicately picked it up in his jaws.

"Okay," Rodimus said. "Maybe he is trying to eat that datapad. Regnus, drop it! Bad 'fox. Drop the 'pad." Minimus leapt up over the edge of the crate again and gave Rodimus what he hoped came over as a wry look. "Give that here." Rodimus made a grab at the datapad and Minimus let him take it. "Doesn't look too damaged."

"It's probably not anything that important," Maximus said. "Let me take a look." Rodimus passed it over, and Max's optics went wide.

"What is it?" Rodimus asked.

"Something actually useful for once," Max said. "If that turbofox of yours had broken it..."

Minimus growled. Was this the thanks he got for trying to be _helpful_?

"Maybe he's just more competent than the two of us combined," Rodimus said, putting his helm down on the table, cushioned by his arms. "A 'fox of the law. Come on Max, is that us done then?"

"This is an excellent start," Maximus said. "Once I've had a chance to read this, I'll know better what I still need to work on. Thank you Rodimus. You - or at least your pet I suppose - have been a big help."

"Oh yeah, you need me and Regnus, call any time," Rodimus said, laughing. "So what now?"

"Now _I _do some reading and _you_ get some recharge."

"Sounds good." Rodimus checked his wrist-comm, and swore. "Ah wait, no. Optimus wants me again. We're going to talk to Megatron."

"Shouldn't I be there as his council?" Max said, frowning.

Rodimus shrugged. Minimus shifted his weight uneasily. Fortress Maximus was right, he ought to be there. He just wasn't sure that Max was confident enough about that to push it. "Optimus only asked for me and Chromedome," he said. "Something about submitting memories as evidence? I don't know. Look, could you take Regnus for me while I go? I think Optimus is getting really fragged off about me bringing him around."

"Happy to return the favour you've just done me," Max said. "See you later. If you're sure I don't need to come...?"

Rodimus waved him off. "Nah. It'll be fine I'm sure."

Minimus would not exactly say that he was _enjoying_ the trial, but it was always satisfying to watch the orderly procession of the law. He was thankful therefore that Rodimus continued to take some kind of comfort in his company, and had been bringing him along each day. Less fortunately, Rodimus still had not actually been back to his cabin yet at all. Minimus was not sure exactly why. Even though they had helped to ferry observers and participants of the trial up to Luna 2 in the _Lost Light_, Rodimus had instead been finding a number of friends and crewmembers to spend his recharge cycles with.

Minimus was fairly certain what he was spending a good portion of that time doing, although it was none of his business. Rodimus had generally been leaving him at Swerve's bar in the meantime, which he was thankful for. He had no particular wish to view his Captain's berth activities. Not that he enjoyed being fussed over by Swerve, but given the circumstances it did appear to be the lesser of two evils.

The trial itself was going much as he had imagined it would. Megatron had plead guilty on the first day, and now they were going through a number of witness impact statements which would guide the Judge in his sentencing. Of course Optimus knew more than most what atrocities Megatron had committed as part of the war, but that was irrelevant. This was what a trial demanded, therefore it must happen.

Starscream had given a particularly obnoxious, grandstanding speech of a statement the day before. Minimus had been watching the effect it had on Megatron, and he would not have liked to be on the receiving end of that fuming anger. Not that there was anything Megatron could do about it now. There seemed little left that could possibly change the outcome of all of this.

Almost nothing. Except... Minimus cocked his helm to the side when Fortress Maximus stood, resetting his vocaliser to get Optimus Prime's attention. "The defendant has instructed me to alert the court to an important chance in circumstance this morning," he said.

"And what is that?" Optimus asked.

"My client wishes to alter his plea," Max replied, looking deeply uncomfortable. Minimus felt his audials go back automatically. What was this? What was Megatron playing at? "He wishes to plead Not Guilty."

"_You _are pleading not guilty?" Optimus asked, optics going wide, turning to look at Megatron.

"That's correct sir," Max said. "He states he has changed his mind."

There was a certain amount of chaos after that statement. Fortress Maximus read out Megatron's prepared speech to the court, his discomfort increasing with every word. Minimus did not get a chance to hear the finale of Megatron's argument because the wall then exploded, and a tide of Decepticons swept into the court. In the battle that followed, Minimus quite lost track of what happened. Order was eventually restored, and the court took a recess - one which he was not party to and nor apparently was Rodimus.

"Look at this mess," Rodimus said, gazing out at the arena floor covered in energon, corpses, and parts that had once been attached to people. "That's gonna take some cleaning up."

Minimus growled, the best he could get to communicating his agreement.

"At least you weren't hurt Regnus," Rodimus said, "well done for sticking next to me. Good 'fox. Let's go and see if we can find someone who knows what's going on."

They weren't particularly luck in that. Rodimus tried to loiter next to the room where Optimus and the others were having closed council, but Sunstreaker chased him off. Back to Swerve's it was then. Minimus vented internally. He envisioned a bowl of energon in his future, and the humiliation of lapping it up had not gotten any better.

It was Ratchet who told them the final outcome of the trial in the end. At any rate he told Rodimus - Minimus just happened to be there as well, which seemed to be the way of it these days. Rodimus did not take it well, and Minimus more than understood. This did not seem to be a good idea, but Optimus obviously had some kind of logic behind his decision. It was hardly Minimus' place to question it. Rodimus could have gone to confront Prime about it himself if he had wanted, but perhaps he knew that it would be futile. It had never been easy to change Optimus' mind about anything.

Rodimus refused to be there when Megatron came on board, but the crew got together a welcoming committee of a sort all the same. It was not particularly welcoming, to say the least. Things were thrown, both physically and verbally. Minimus watched, and wound his way between mechs' legs to get a good view. He wasn't sure exactly what he was looking for. Some change in Megatron? Some sign that he was a new mech, rather than the warlord they all knew him to be? Whatever it was Optimus had seen, Minimus certainly did not.

Megatron was watching him too, Minimus realised, and bared his dentae. Megatron actually chuckled quietly, and turned to Ratchet who had followed him on board pulling a large hoversled piled high with crates, each stamped with a medical symbol.

"Who is the beastformer?" Megatron asked. "I saw him at the trial with Rodimus, but I don't recognise him."

"Beastformer?" Ratchet asked. Minimus froze.

"Yes," Megatron said, and pointed. "The little green and white one."

All optics turned to look at Minimus.

-8-

Megatron had been curious about the diminutive bot since spotting him next to the former Prime at his trial. Beastformers were uncommon enough as it was, and less common still outside of Decepticon ranks. Considering the kind of prejudice that had been and still was directed towards them, it was hardly surprising that they tended to find his own philosophy more helpful than Autobot platitudes. So he had to wonder why this one was accompanying an Autobot to the trial, and why Megatron had never seen him before. Their race was much diminished; his memory cores contained records of every Decepticon and most Autobots. Yet he knew nothing of this one.

Perhaps a Neutral? Yet it seemed unlikely a Neutral would have worked his way into the Autobot Inner Circle so quickly.

When he indicated the mech though, his gesture was met with quickly-stifled laughter from the crew.

"That's not a beastformer," Ratchet said, giving him a strange look. "It's a turbofox."

Megatron felt his spark pulse with alarm that he did not permit to show outwardly. This was... concerning. "A turbofox would not sit and pay rapt attention to legal proceedings," he said. "Not to mention that he has full transformation seams."

He would have expected the beastformer to have said something by now, to make some kind of protest at the erasure of his personhood, but he simply trotted forwards with the optics of the crowd still upon him and sat down a short distance away, staring up at Ratchet and him.

Megatron's comment at least made Ratchet frown at the beastformer, and regard him with some genuine curiosity. "You're sure about that are you?" he asked, then spoke again before Megatron could answer. "No, of course you are. That doesn't explain why he's never spoken however."

Megatron looked at the seated mech with growing horror. "You can't speak?" he asked him. The beastformer shook his head, and whined softly. Megatron whirled back to Ratchet. "What have you done to him?" he demanded.

Ratchet held up wary servos, and Megatron was aware of the mechs around him tensing, the faint hum on the edge of hearing that meant weapons were being readied. He forced himself not to do what he _wanted_, which was to grab Ratchet by the neck and shake him until answers came out. He _did_ take his claimed Autobrand seriously.

"We found him like this," Ratchet said, "On Luna-1. In a cell. We assumed Tyrest had finished off his owner and forgotten the pet was there but..." Megatron's engine revved at the word _'pet'_, loud enough to echo off the walls. He forced himself to throttle it back. If he allowed his anger to get the better of him they would use it as an excuse to put him back in a cell on Cybertron.

"You're saying Tyrest is to blame for this," Megatron said. His plating had fluffed up aggressively without his conscious intent; he smoothed it back down now.

"Seems likely," Ratchet replied. "I don't know exactly what _has_ been done to him."

"Then let us find out," Megatron suggested. He glanced down at the beastformer. "If you are agreeable."

The mech nodded emphatically.

"Guess we were going to the medbay anyway to drop this stuff off," Ratchet said. "Come on Regnus, hop up on the cart and we'll see what's what."

"So you do know his name."

Ratchet shrugged. "We had to call him something."

"While you thought he was your _pet_," Megatron growled. "Did you truly not notice anything unusual?"

"Obviously not."

Other mechs kept a wide berth from them as they navigated through the corridors of the ship. Megatron held no illusions. They feared him and they hated him. Taking a position as their Captain would not be easy, but he had always risen to the challenges life put in front of him. This would be no different. There was no sign however of the vessel's former Captain and now Second. That surprised him. He had expected Rodimus to be up in his faceplates from the very first moment he stepped onboard, challenging him and goading him both. Yet there was nothing. He could not even be sure Rodimus was actually on board.

He had questions for Rodimus now. 'Regnus' had been at Rodimus' side; of any of the mechs on this ship _he_ should have been able to see that this supposed mechanimal was anything but. It did not speak well of him that he had not noticed.

When they reached the medbay, Ratchet pushed the hoversled they had been pulling into the corner and grabbed 'Regnus' around the middle. Apparently used to this kind of disrespectful handling, the beastformer simply let himself be lifted up onto one of the examination tables.

"Let's have a closer look then," Ratchet said, and started checking the small mech over. Megatron watched silently. He could hear the faint whirr as Ratchet's medic-type optics dialled in and out of magnification, and he noticed as well that the medic became stiffer and stiffer in his body language as he went on.

Finally Ratchet drew back, looking deeply unhappy, and said, "It seems our crew are going to have some apologies to make."

"I imagine so," Megatron said, trying not to sound overly judgemental.

"His vocaliser and t-cog have both been surgically removed," Ratchet said. Megatron balled his servos into fists and squeezed until he heard the joints creak. There was no-one here for him to lash out at. The perpetrators of this crime were far away, and possibly already dead. "I have my suspicions about who might have done that to him. Not many medics are so experienced at t-cog extraction, or so fragging unprincipled. A pity any mech can only die once."

"So he has been taken offline?"

Ratchet nodded. "Complete destruction of the helm and processor," he said.

"And what can be done for our friend here?" Megatron asked, indicating 'Regnus'.

"I can construct a new vocaliser easily enough," Ratchet said. "They're complicated and fiddly, but any medic worth his circuits can build one. It won't sound quite the same as the one he was forged with, but aside from that it'll be good as new. The t-cog on the other hand..." He shook his head. "It's one of the three vital components for a reason. Medical science has been looking for a way to build artificial transformation cogs since before the war and we still can't do it. He's going to be stuck in turbofox mode unless we can find someone to donate a replacement."

'Regnus' whined. His audials were back and his plating closed tight. He had obviously been hoping that this would finally herald a return to normality for him, but it seemed that it was not to be. Megatron's spark burned with sympathetic anger. This kind of crime was a relic of the so-called 'Golden Age'. A nightmare of Functionalist ideology. A furthering of the idea that since Primus clearly intended such mechs to fulfil the function of mechanimals, society would help them to fill that role by stripping them of what made them mechs; their voices and their root-modes.

"I'll get started on that vocaliser," Ratchet said. "Then at least we can find out exactly what happened on Luna-1."

Minimus lay on the top of the examination table, his helm resting on his servos. He had expected to feel happy when his crewmates finally realised that he was not a mechanimal. Instead he felt almost as low as before. Yes, soon he would be able to talk again, rather than trying to communicate in mere noises, but he was still stuck in this form. He wasn't going to be of any use to anyone. He wasn't going to be able to _do_ anything.

Minimus had been an Autobot for millennia, and had worn the Magnus Armour for vorns. He knew more than most that the prejudice against beastformers had not ended with the Senate and the old order of Cybertronian society. It was more subtle than it had been when he and Dominus had been young, but that didn't mean it didn't exist. Dominus had kept his alt secret even as the war raged on, and Minimus would never have dared to show this side of himself to his friends on board the _Lost Light_ even if he had been out of the Magnus armour.

How could he even try and explain to them that he had been Ultra Magnus when he didn't even look like a mech? It was hard enough to believe as it was. They certainly wouldn't believe him.

Well. Perhaps that wasn't true of everyone. Ratchet might believe him; they had enough shared memories that surely Minimus could tell him about things that only the two of them knew had happened. And Megatron...

He had Megatron to thank for finally noticing he was more than he seemed, and he hadn't even had to resort to petty vandalism to make him see it. Megatron had simply... noticed. Sight alone had been enough. It hurt that the Decepticon warlord of all mechs had been more perceptive and open-minded than any of his crewmates. It did not seem that things should be that way. Yet he could not be truly angry when it meant that at least he would be able to speak again.

Megatron was still here, unpacking large flasks of energon from the crates which he and Ratchet had brought on board. Each one was labelled with his name. Minimus supposed this must be the so-called 'fool's energon' that Ratchet had told Rodimus about. Minimus was trying not to make it obvious that he was watching him, though he had also caught Megatron watching him back from the corner of his optics several times. It was strange being in the same room with him when he was not a prisoner. He kept getting the feeling that he should be afraid, or should be taking some kind of pre-emptive action, but those were old instincts. They didn't apply now.

"Here we go," Ratchet said, pulling aside the mesh curtain that separated his work-station from the rest of medbay. "You ready to get this installed?"

Minimus sat up, answering with a single, short bark.

"Fine." Ratchet came over with a tiny, delicate component cupped in one servo. "I'll disconnect the pain receptors in that area and then I can just pop this in. At least Pharma kept his work neat there - there's only the barest weld-line to cut through."

Minimus growled at the mention of Pharma's name; an automatic reaction. He was less than keen on having the operation done while he was awake as well. When it had been done to him the first time around, he had been alert and struggling to escape, pinned down by the heavy, powerful servos of the Legislators. _Pharma_ had not bothered to disconnect his pain receptors.

When Ratchet reached for his neck, Minimus drew back, shaking his helm. "What's the matter now?" Ratchet asked, glaring at him and trying again. Minimus whined, then crouched down, draping his paws over his deactivated optics. Ratchet made a thoughtful noise.

"I believe he may be trying to indicate that he would prefer you to do this with him in stasis," Megatron remarked pausing in his task of unpacking crates.

Ratchet went still, then he said, "I think I understand why. It's alright Regnus. Stasis it is."

Minimus would have signed with relief if he had been capable of it. He relaxed and let Ratchet run a hard-line to the medical port at the back of his neck. The comforting darkness of stasis soon took him, quiet and timeless.

Megatron kept on stacking the medbay shelves while Ratchet worked. He could not drag his thoughts away from what had been done to the beastformer. He had to keep his servos gentle on the canisters to prevent himself from crushing them. The fear 'Regnus' had displayed at the thought of Ratchet operating on him awake, even with the benefit of receptor blocking, was telling. Traumatic as the removal of vocaliser and t-cog had to be, it had been made worse by the way it had been done. This felt like more than Functionalist malice. It felt personal.

Eventually Ratchet stood back, cleaning his tools of slight traces of energon and folding them away. "I'll be bringing him out of stasis now," he said. "He might be disorientated for a few kliks, so you keep well back."

Megatron nodded. The small, limp figure on the table started to stir, and optics unshuttered, glowing brightly. "Ratchet?" the mech said, his first few glyphs edged with static as his new vocaliser started to integrate. "Am I injured? What happened to me?" He trailed off, his tail and audials both twitching.

"Just relax," Ratchet said. "Do you know where you are?"

"_Lost Light_," 'Regnus' said sleepily. He yawned, showing off sharp dentae.

"Can you tell me your name?"

"It's me Ratchet. You know me." Optics flickered off and on. The beastformer cocked his helm as he started to look a little more alert, and less disorientated.

"I know you, yes," Ratchet said patiently. "But none of us know your real name."

"Oh. Yes." Some kind of realisation seemed to creep into his voice. He sat up and wrapped his tail around his servos, an oddly prim gesture. He reset his vocaliser. "Yes, I... My apologies. I forgot myself for a moment there. My name is... Minimus. Minimus Ambus."

That House-name was familiar. To Ratchet as well as to Megatron it seemed, as the medic asked, "Ambus. Any relation to Dominus Ambus?"

Minimus' tail flicked. "Yes," he said. "My spark-brother."

"I wasn't aware he had a brother," Ratchet noted. "Was that because of..."

"Because of my alt-mode? No." Emotions were expressed differently in a mechanimal alt than in a mech's root-mode, but Megatron had some experience from spending so much time around Ravage. He detected a wry displeasure. "No, I was simply not as accomplished as he was."

"I understand things will have been very difficult for you of late," Ratchet said, hesitating over his words slightly. "I didn't realise what you were. I'm sorry for that."

"You fixed my vocaliser. That's apology enough."

"It's really not," Ratchet said. "I do need to ask however. What were you doing in that cell on Luna-1?"

Minimus' audials went back. "I'm happy to tell you," he said, "but you're going to find my story hard to believe Ratchet."


	3. Chapter 3

-9-

As Minimus had hoped, making reference to events from his life that only he and Ratchet were likely to be aware of was an effective means of proving his identity. Ratchet ex-vented once he had finished speaking, and looked at him thoughtfully.

"You know, I knew _something_ was going on with Ultra Magnus," he said, surprising Minimus. "You didn't think the attention deflectors inside the armour were going to work forever, now did you? The amount of time I spent as your medic..."

"The armour was not of my design," Minimus replied, unable to stop his audials flicking and showing his unease. He had tried to skip over Tyrest's role in the narrative of Ultra Magnus, not wanting to answer questions about his former mentor, but he knew it was going to be unavoidable.

"I can't be the only medic who noticed over the years," Ratchet said. "Although I only ever saw you in there. Impressive though. Loadbearing spark, I take it." Minimus nodded. "So what happened? I thought you were dead after Overlord almost punched through your chestplates and out the other side."

"I was in stasis," Minimus replied. "I don't recall precisely. However the armour has a homing device, and will seek to return to its creator when its wearer has been seriously injured or killed. You followed me to Luna-1. You know the rest of it."

Ratchet snorted. "Hardly. There's the not-so-little matter of what happened in between you getting dragged there, and Rodimus finding you in a cell." Unspoken, but implied in his expression, was the question 'who did this to you?'. As thought it was not obvious.

Megatron growled, a low rev of powerful engines, drawing attention to himself. "I was told Tyrest had become paranoid, delusional," he said. "What did he _think_ you had done?" Minimus avoided his optics. Megatron had always been perceptive. It was part of what made him dangerous. It should not be a surprise that he had correctly read this as the punishment it was.

"He felt I had... let myself go. Slipped. That I no longer commanded the respect that Ultra Magnus was due." The words felt like they came from far away. He could not deny that they were true. He could only deny that the punishment had been proportionate to that crime.

"And he thought _that_ was worth reducing you to this?" Ratchet said, anger getting the better of him.

Megatron growled again. "A mech cannot be reduced to _what he is_," he said sharply, "but taking away his voice..."

"You know full well I didn't mean it like that," Ratchet said, turning on him and jabbing a stiffened digit into the warlord's chestplates. "Don't act so high and mighty with _me_. You've done far worse than mutilate a mech in your functioning."

"That," Megatron replied stiffly, "depends upon your point of view."

Ratchet glared, but obviously decided not to push the matter further. He turned back to Minimus. "I suppose the real question is, what now?"

"I imagine I must leave that up to my Captain," Minimus said, looking at Megatron. "Whomever that is. I confess the situation with the command ranks is not entirely clear to me."

" You're not the only one," Ratchet said.

"Where _is_ Rodimus?" Megatron asked. "I haven't seen him since the end of the trial."

"Pretending the problem will go away if he ignores it long enough," Ratchet replied. "He's in his quarters."

"Perhaps we should visit him there. We can ask him about..." Megatron paused. "Which designation do you prefer? Minimus, or Magnus?"

Minimus hesitated over the answer. If he had been asked this immediately after being rescued from Luna-1, he would have replied that he had been Ultra Magnus for so long that nothing else would feel the same. But it had been long enough since then that it was as if he had begun to shed the identity he had worn for so many vorns. He had been 'Regnus', and now he was... well. He was Minimus Ambus, of a noble house that had long concealed its 'primitive' code-lines by mastering the art of constructing false-frames.

"Minimus will do," he said. "I agree. We do need Rodimus' input, and he should be made aware as well that I am not... Regnus."

Megatron frowned. "He was with you for how long, and still did not realise what you were?"

"He had other things on his mind," Minimus replied, feeling the need to defend his Captain. There had been no malice in the way Rodimus had treated him even as a mechanimal, although overall he could not describe the experience as pleasant. Still he couldn't help but think of Rodimus curled up in defeat on his berth, spark beaten down by Optimus' harsh words. This business with Megatron would not have made things any better there.

"At least it's an excuse to drag him out of his room," Ratchet said, grumbling mostly to himself. "Let's not waste any time about it - so long as you feel fully recovered."

"I'm fine," Minimus said, and got to his pedes intending to jump down to the floor. It was some distance, and as he hesitated, Megatron cleared his intake politely.

"May I offer a ride?" he asked, bringing his servo down to the edge of the medical berth.

"I suppose it would be nice to be able to look other mechs in the optics again," Minimus said, and carefully climbed onto Megatron's forearm.

"I believe you may find the place up on my shoulder here to be the most comfortable," Megatron suggested. He lifted his arm to make it easier for Minimus to make the climb. The spot was broader than he had expected, nestled between the barrel of Megatron's alt-cannon behind him, his treads to the right, and his helm to the left. Megatron's plating was as warm as that of any healthy mech, but Minimus was still not used to such close proximity to others even despite all of the recent petting he had received.

"You will have to lead the way Ratchet," Megatron said, his low voice a thrum of vibration conducted up through Minimus' paws. "I am not yet that familiar with this ship."

Other members of the crew were out in the corridors, the bustle and alarm of Megatron's arrival on board having had time to settle down somewhat. Minimus watched them with interest; he noted plenty of curious, cautious and alarmed glances in their direction, but it was not possible to say whether they were reacting to him or to Megatron. He wondered how quickly the news of what had happened in the loading bay to spread. Gossip did tend to travel fast on the _Lost Light_. Would it be all over the ship yet, or were there still some mechs out there who hadn't yet heard?

It had felt necessary to divulge his true identity to Ratchet, and to Rodimus, but he was less sure he wanted the rest of the crew to know. He could not be sure of their reactions, not the way he could with those he knew well. He still acutely felt the pain of Tyrest's accusation. If he had already been losing their respect as Ultra Magnus, then how much worse would that become when they knew the truth of him beneath the armour.

Minimus knew he was nothing special. There hadn't been a single remarkable thing about him before he had donned the armour. He had tried his best to live up to the memory of the Magnuses that had come before him, and he hadn't _thought_ he had failed in that, but... Tyrest had as good as said he shouldn't have been surprised at Minimus' failure. Had suggested even that he should have _expected_ it of a beastformer.

Dominus had spent his life arguing that people like them were not forged lesser than other cybertronians. What about _his _memory? Surely letting Tyrest's words get to him like this was disrespecting what his brother had fought for...

They had reached Rodimus' quarters. Ratchet stood in front of the door and banged on it hard, shouting out. "Rodimus, it's me," he bellowed. "I need to talk to you. It's urgent, so don't think I'll be going anywhere if you don't answer me. If I have to use medical overrides to get in there..."

Minimus' sensitive audials picked up the sound of pedesteps. The door slid open just a crack - it must be on manual settings.

"What is it Ratch?" Rodimus sounded tired. As weary as he had before the trial.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?"

A pause. "I'm not exactly up for entertaining, Ratchet."

"You think I care if your place is a mess?" Ratchet asked. "Believe me, I've seen worse."

Another long pause. Then the door slid open a little more, enough so that he could actually get a proper look at Rodimus - and enough that Rodimus could get a proper look at their group. "What's _he_ doing here?" Rodimus snarled, baring his dentae at Megatron. "And who let him have Regnus?" He darted forwards suddenly, reaching up to try and grab hold of Minimus. "_Give him back_," Rodimus said, sounding as angry as Minimus had ever heard him. "_You don't get to take him too_."

Megatron evaded this attempt by the simple expediency of leaning backwards. Tall as he was, Rodimus simply could not reach up to his shoulder. "A person is not something to be taken," he said. Minimus was relieved that he hadn't reacted to Rodimus' aggression with aggression of his own. He could easily see this whole situation going badly wrong.

Rodimus paused. "What the slag are you talking about?"

Minimus cleared his intake. "My name isn't Regnus," he said. "And I'm not actually a mechanimal."

Rodimus looked at him, optics wide. "You... Have you been able to talk this whole time?"

"Obviously he hasn't," Ratchet said, ex-venting. "I've just fixed his vocaliser. Now, are we going to do this out in the hallway or go _inside_ like civilised bots?"

"Fine," Rodimus said, glaring at Megatron and pushing his door fully open. "You can come in, and tell me what in the Pit is going on."

Inside, Minimus couldn't help looking down at the place on the wall where he had scratched his message. It was still there, obviously unread... but he could appreciate from this height that it did not exactly draw the optic, and was clearly easy to overlook. If only there had been the chance to point it out to Rodimus earlier on... but at least things seemed to have worked out partially in the end. Looking around further, he could understand some of Rodimus' reticence to let them inside. The room was in a state of disarray, with datapads and empty energon cubes strewn around, and some of Rodimus' signature 'doodling' carved not only onto the desk in here, but the deck plating as well.

"So..." Rodimus said awkwardly, once they were inside. "You're a beastformer. Not a real turbofox. And I'm guessing something happened before we found you in that cell to make it really seem like you were a mechanimal."

Ah yes. The necessities of explaining things all over again. Minimus prepared to speak, but Rodimus hadn't finished.

"I don't understand why none of us noticed!" he exclaimed, sounding genuinely distressed. "You let us carry you around, and pet you, and... how did Ratchet even find out now?"

Megatron's engine gave a throaty rumble. "He found out only when I pointed it out to him," he said. There was an edge of accusation to his tone. "And I _too _wonder why not a single Autobot on this vessel noticed that they had discovered an injured, trapped mech."

"I did make some attempts to communicate," Minimus said, feeling some embarrassed heat build under his plating. He hadn't made a very good job of it. "It was harder than I anticipated."

"Or perhaps the mechs around you were too blinded by their own _prejudices_," Megatron suggested. "Particularly since Rodimus here seems to be suggesting that you simply weren't _trying hard enough_ to show them what you were."

"Oh is _that_ why you're here?" Rodimus is said, angry again. "To throw around accusations? Ratchet and... whoever Regnus _really_ is... are welcome in my quarters but _you_ certainly aren't, so how about you frag off, huh?"

"There are matters which require discussion first," Megatron said. "As I did not come here merely to 'throw around accusations', as you suggest."

"Yes," Minimus said. He felt deeply uncomfortable with the level of tension in the room. "I haven't told you of my identity yet Rodimus."

"Oh yeah, sorry," Rodimus said. "I hope you didn't mind the name we gave you _too_ much."

"It was better than some of the alternatives," Minimus said. "Still, we knew each other before you found me on Luna-1." And he started the whole explanation over again.

-10-

Rodimus took the news better than Minimus might have expected. There was suspicion at first, but it melted away as the evidence mounted up, though it left hurt behind. It was there if you knew what to look for in the stiffness of his plating, in the depths of his optics. Minimus saw the effort it took him to push all of that down and focus on the present moment.

He shifted guiltily from his perch on Megatron's shoulder. Rodimus had bared his spark to what he thought was his pet. If he had known the truth...

"Okay, I understand why you thought we all needed to talk about this," Rodimus said, "And even why _Megatron_ had to be here. I guess what we do now though all depends on what _you_ want uh... Minimus. Magnus. Whatever."

"Minimus, please. And I'm afraid I really haven't thought about that very much."

"Well, do you want us to try and find a way back to Luna-1, see if the Magnus armour is still there?" Rodimus asked. "Do you _want_ to be Ultra Magnus again or is it, I don't know, tainted for you now or something?"

Minimus felt his plating ripple. This alt was far more expressive than the armour had ever been. "Even if it could be found," he said, hating to admit it, "wearing it again would not be possible. I can't transform. I suppose Ratchet could reconfigure it but the idea of spending my life in truck-alt is hardly better than _this_, if perhaps with even _more _disadvantages."

Rodimus winced. "Can we get you a new t-cog from somewhere then, and maybe _then_ go back for the armour?"

Ratchet snorted. "Yeah, as spare t-cogs in his size are simply lying around for medics to pick up off the ground. Even if we could find another beastformer as small, you really think they'd be happy to give up a vital component out of sheer good-will?"

"It is hardly impossible to live your life in a form like yours," Megatron said, turning his helm enough to look at Minimus from the corner of his optic. "Ravage has certainly managed it for millions of years."

"He has?" Rodimus asked, sounding surprised, then visibly quailed under what Minimus was sure had to be one Pit of a glare from Megatron. "I just meant I didn't know he even _had_ an alt."

"Of course Ravage has a mech root mode," Megatron said. His tone was cold as deep-space. "In the early days of the Decepticons, he chose to have his t-cog removed as an act of political protest. He chose to visibly embody the monstrosity of what was done to so many like him by the Functionalists."

"I... never knew any of that," Rodimus said.

"No, I cannot imagine that Autobots ever discussed the finer points of our philosophy." Minimus could hear the tensing hiss of hydraulics faintly from beneath Megatron's armour. The warlord's feelings on this matter were clearly strong.

Ratchet cleared his intake. "I wouldn't have taken Ravage for a militant Monoformer," he said, keeping his voice light. "You don't suppose he happened to keep his t-cog around, preferably in a sterile, vacuum-sealed container perhaps?"

"I don't know that he would describe himself as an adherent of the monoformer movement," Megatron said, seeming to calm slightly. "And as to his t-cog, I believe he had it mailed to one of the Functionalist senators as part of an explosive device - oh, don't look at me like that. It wasn't as successful as we had hoped. I had to kill them the old-fashioned way, as you are all well aware."

The reminder of the massacre of the Senate put something of a dampener on an already tense mood. "For my part," Minimus said, hoping to steer the conversation back to safer skies, as much as that was possible, "I accept that I am going to be stuck in this form for... an uncertain amount of time. For the foreseeable future, certainly. However I am not Ravage. I did not chose this fate for myself, and if it is at _all_ possible... I would like things to go back to the way they used to be. Or as close to that as could be achieved."

"Do you really dislike your own form so much?" Megatron asked, "Or do you simply dislike the way you will inevitably be treated?"

"Inevitably?" Rodimus said, bristling. "You think this ship is just full of form-bigots, huh?"

"Rodimus," Minimus said, noting that the sharpness of his tone had the same effect as if had when he was still Ultra Magnus. "I understand you wish to see the best in others, but please believe that I have seen the darker side of many bots in our faction. Not everyone acts in a way that upholds the principles behind the Autobot Code."

"Ah yes," Megatron said, with dark humour. "Your precious Code."

Minimus felt his plating fluff up, though this time he made no attempt to hide it. "The Code is something _you_ are now responsible for obeying and enforcing, given that you have sworn an oath to the Autobots, and bear our brand. You should remember that, Megatron."

He felt as much as heard Megatron's ex-vent, as plating rumbled beneath his servos. "I suppose that is true."

"Anyway, does it matter why I feel the way that I do?" Minimus asked. "If you are all so keen to hear my views and to act on them, then you may pay attention to this. I am simply going to be Minimus Ambus to the rest of the crew for now. I will do my best to be a useful member of this crew, but I do not expect any special treatment because of my previous rank. If Ratchet is ever able to find or somehow construct a t-cog for me, then we can have the discussion about Ultra Magnus with the rest of the ship."

"You know you would not bring any shame on the name of Ultra Magnus..." Megatron started to say quietly, but Minimus turned to him sharply, almost snapping his dentae closed in front of his faceplates in a surge of sudden emotion.

"My reasons do not matter," Minimus said. Megatron watched him with calm optics.

"As you say."

Minimus took a calming vent in and out, his fans whirring. "Naturally I am at your disposal going forward, Captain," he said to Rodimus, then glanced back at Megatron. "Or... Captains?"

"Co-Captains," Rodimus said quickly. "If that's what _Optimus_ insists you have to be."

"Yes," Megatron said. He sounded thoughtful. "Co-Captains. And do you have some kind of duties in mind for Minimus?"

Obviously caught out, Rodimus hesitated. "I suppose he can just join the regular duty roster with everyone else," he said, doubtfully. "I guess there might be things that he can't physically do, but it's not like we aren't used to working around the minibots or whatever."

Ratchet sized Minimus up. "You're medically fit for duty at least," he said. "Are you going to want your old cabin back? Might have to get someone to clear up the legal datapads that two certain someones left all over the place."

Minimus thought of Ultra Magnus' quarters, sized for a mech of that weight-class, and felt his spark pulse with sorrow and loss. "I... think I would prefer not to be alone right now," he said carefully. "I would be happy to try and find a compatible room-mate, although I appreciate that most of the crew will already have one."

"You could stay with me," both Rodimus and Megatron said at the same time, and then glared at one another.

"Thank you for the offers," Minimus said quickly, before any argument could escalate. "However I think it will cause questions if I share a room with either of the ship's Captains when so far as everyone is aware, I am a stranger to you. I will try and find someone else first."

"I don't think Swerve has found a room-mate yet," Ratchet said, arms folded over his chestplates. "Might be a possibility."

Swerve had petted him behind the audials and fed him energon from a bowl off the floor. Minimus cringed at the thought of sharing a room with him, but the feeling wasn't quite as bad as the discomfort at being the cause of further tension between his Captains.

"At first at least," he said, trying to appear satisfied.

"Primus takes joy in co-incidence," Megatron said, entering his berth-room and closing the door quickly behind him. "I was just talking about you." Ravage watched him silently from on top of the desk. There was a certain degree of judgement in his optics. "I was not aware that you were on board," Megatron added, truthfully. However he was not surprised to see Ravage here either. It was entirely in character for Soundwave to want to keep an optic on him, given his changed circumstances.

"You've been making friends here already," Ravage said. It was difficult to infer his feelings from the tone of his voice, as it so often was. Megatron sat down on the edge of the room's bare, basic berth-slab.

"Which friends are you specifically referring to?"

"Ultra Magnus, apparently."

"So you overheard that conversation," Megatron said. "I would have thought Ratchet had learned enough to keep you out of his medbay by now."

"Not when he isn't expecting me," Ravage replied. "Now what, exactly, are you doing?"

"Doing? You'll have to be more specific."

Ravage snarled. "Don't play games with me Megatron. Why did you give that speech? Why are you playing at being an Autobot? Why didn't you take the out we offered you at your trial? You could have left then, escaped, restarted the fight if that's what we need to do or at least made it so someone other than _Starscream_ is in charge of our peace, but..."

"Perhaps I realised something had to change."

Ravage's tail twitched, the only external sign of his distress. "Are you so sure you're really you?" he asked. "They have a mnemosurgeon on board here. He went to your cell - we know that much, but we didn't have eyes inside the prison."

Megatron shuttered his optics, horror his instinctive reaction at the mere idea. Ravage was right, Chromedome had visited him, but Optimus hadn't actually had him _do _anything, not when he had resisted... Or at least, that was what he remembered. Memories... memories could be changed, now couldn't they.

"Rodimus was there as well," he said. "He's a childish, impulsive fool. If that had happened he wouldn't have been able to resist rubbing my nasal ridge in it."

"And yet you aren't acting like yourself," Ravage said. "You were very keen to show your support for Ultra Magnus..."

"My support for a _beastformer_," Megatron corrected him, frowning. "One who had been mutilated and silenced, and before I knew who he was. Are _you_ really going to criticise me for _that_?"

Ravage looked away. "No, I suppose not," he said grudgingly. "Isn't it telling though that he's an Autobot despite his alt? You know what they're like - I'm certain _he_ knows what they're like. He's a sell-out."

"He hates himself." That much had been easy to see. It was not an unfamiliar attitude, and Megatron had plenty of experience with mechs from disposable classes who thought about themselves like that. The Cause had been something to give them value... ah, but that had all gone so wrong somewhere down the line, hadn't it. It was why he was here now, after all.

"That's an attitude that _would_ make it all the easier to oppress his own kind," Ravage said, snarling. "He's been hiding all these millions of years."

"Not every mech has your courage."

"Is he part of your plan now then?" Ravage asked him. "I _assume_ you have one - or think you do."

"I would like to help him, yes," Megatron said. "Perhaps you might even do the same."

The glare he got for that could have stripped paint. "I really have no interest in helping someone who doesn't want to be helped."

Megatron hummed thoughtfully. "Well, we'll see."

-11-

"I guess this is kind of awkward," Swerve said, and plastered on his best grin. The not-actually-a-turbofox looked up at him.

"I feel the same way," he said. He had a nice voice. Deeper than you would expect from something his size. Swerve didn't have much experience with beastformers, although he didn't think that he was alone on that front. Most of them had been Decepticons, and there hadn't been a lot of them to begin with.

"It'll be nice to finally have a room-mate though," Swerve said, folding his servos together, then taking them apart, then together again. "It's... you know... everyone paired up so quickly and then there was nobody I really knew so..."

"I'm sure we will get along fine," Regnus said - no, not Regnus, not anymore. Minimus. That was cute, actually. He really was 'mini'.

"Are you going to be okay with a whole berth-slab?" Swerve asked. "Would you want somewhere more enclosed, you know, like a den?"

Minimus took a few moments before answering. "No, thank you Swerve. The berth will be fine, if you can leave a chair next to it so I can get up there."

"Sure, sure," Swerve said, nodding enthusiastically. "What about entertainment? I like to have Earth-shows on for a bit when I get back from the bar; helps me slip into recharge. Have you heard of Earth? It's a pretty cool place, I'm sure you would like it. They have lots of animals there."

"I am not much of one for holos," Minimus said. "However I would not object to you watching what you want to. This was your room first, after all."

"Okay, that's good... What about energon? I usually just refuel at the bar, but you could always swing by there, or I could bring you something back to drink. Do you want me to bring your bowl? Or I could get you another one for here...?"

The beastformer's audials twitched. Swerve had the strong urge to reach out and scritch behind them, but that would be kind of weird right in the middle of a conversation, right? Maybe later. He entertained brief thoughts of Minimus curled up next to him while he watched an episode of _Cheers_, purring gently while Swerve pet him. That would be a nice addition to his usual end-cycle routine.

"How about a regular cube and a straw," Minimus said.

Swerve frowned. "Wouldn't that be kind of awkward to drink from?" he asked.

"I would prefer that."

Swerve shrugged. "If that's what you want? Oh, and just to warn you, we have Minibot Movie Night here sometimes, though obviously you're welcome to join us for that whether it's here or at Tailgate's, or Rewind's."

"I will... consider that," Minimus said. "I had better get to my shift. It was nice to... meet you properly."

"You too," Swerve said, getting the door for him and watching him trot away down the corridor. He was feeling kind of optimistic about this.

Rooming with Swerve was worse than he had thought it might be. Their initial discussion about it had not been particularly promising given the multiple prejudiced assumptions Swerve had made about him. Minimus had hoped it was simple ignorance, and that Swerve would learn better as they spent time together. Yet it seemed the minibot was rather slow on the uptake. He still treated him more like a mechanimal than the person he was, even down to the fact that he still tried to pet him from time to time. Minimus had asked him politely not to, and then less politely, but it had done no good. Swerve kept on 'just forgetting', or insisting that Minimus was 'just too adorable'. It was a clear sign that he didn't take him seriously, didn't take his _requests_ seriously. It made him want to purge his tanks.

Minimus had had enough. He was tired of this, and he was more than ready to take one of his co-Captains up on their earlier offers even if made other crew members look at him strangely.

He was on shift with Rodimus this cycle, which was advantageous for the conversation he wanted to have. He caught his Captain during a free moment, and asked, "Sir, if you're available, I would appreciate the chance to talk to you privately when we're both free."

"Okay, sure Minimus," Rodimus said. "What's this all about?"

"I would rather wait to discuss it," Minimus said, and went back to monitoring the security cameras. Ratchet had installed a manual trigger for his cable panel, given that he couldn't even transform that open himself without a t-cog, and although he needed assistance to plug in, once he was inside the _Lost Light's_ systems he was the same as any other mech.

Rodimus was quiet for the rest of the shift, watching him carefully, but he didn't bring their coming conversation up again until they had both left the bridge. At least _he_ could pay attention to what Minimus said!

Minimus trotted along at Rodimus' heels, trying not to be bothered by the looks he still got from crew as he passed. It was not as though he hadn't known things would be like this. His audials were sensitive, both in and out of his alt. He had always been able to hear the kind of conversations most mechs would rather Ultra Magnus did not overhear. He was roughly aware of which crewmembers held alt-ist views, but there were always those who surprised you. Muttered comments in his direction. Sneers and, when he was alone, the odd attempted kick or petting - he wasn't sure which was worse. Attitudes ranged from despising beastformers as primitive, somehow 'dirty' or 'jumped up above their station', or treating them as mechanimals with no rights over their own bodies.

When they reached Rodimus' quarters the other mech paused. "You okay with talking in here?" he asked. "I just kinda assumed you would be, sorry."

"This is fine," Minimus said. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well... hmm." Rodimus hesitated, then opened the door and led them both inside. Minimus looked automatically towards the place where he had scratched in his message - knowing his vandalism was still there had been a low-level irritation in the back of his processor, but he hadn't wanted to cause Rodimus additional guilt by pointing it out. The message was still there, but when he looked back Rodimus was staring at it too. "Yeah, so I really messed up didn't I," he said.

"I don't blame you in any way for how things turned out after Luna-1," Minimus said. There was an edge of something brittle and delicate underneath Rodimus' otherwise confident, breezy tone. He had been spending a lot more time in his room since Megatron had come on board, but when he was around other people he didn't give out any sign of inner distress. Minimus was starting to believe that didn't mean anything however. Rodimus might be a much better actor than he had ever imagined.

Rodimus' face twisted in an uncomfortable expression. "You know you don't have'ta say that kind of thing just to make me feel better, you get that right?"

"That isn't why I'm saying it. I never had a chance to point that message out to you, and no-one else was able to pick up on any of my methods of communication. You are not solely responsible..."

Rodimus didn't look any happier. "Megatron just had to look at you," he said.

"Megatron has experience with beastformers that the crew does not," Minimus pointed out.

"Yeah, doesn't stop him making me feel like something scraped of the bottom of his pede though," Rodimus said bitterly, then looked away. Minimus got the feeling he had been more honest than he'd been intending.

"Has he been making things difficult for you?" Minimus asked, plating fluffing up in a protective gesture. "If he has decided to make himself the unofficial guardian of my... my honour, perhaps... I can discuss that with him."

Rodimus looked torn. "No, well. It's not just me he gives a hard time, but I think some of the others actually deserve it. He got up in Atomiser's grill the other day about some comment he made - when I asked the guys Atomiser was sitting with they admitted he had said something really nasty, so he totally deserved that time cooling off in the brig."

Minimus nodded, glad he had missed all of that. It was difficult to know how to react. Whether he ought to attempt to confront people, or just ignore them. Perhaps what he was more afraid of was attempting to confront them and simply being laughed off. He was already an object of humour to many simply by being what he was. He didn't want to make that worse by illustrating just how powerless he was in this form.

Other beastformers had large, powerful, dangerous alts. He had... this. Was being feared better than being pitied? He was beginning to think it was.

"I thought Atomiser was a decent mech," Rodimus continued, sounding upset. "At least he always was to me - now I find out he thinks things like that!" His spoiler dropped low on his back. "Anyway, I'm sorry for getting into all this. I don't think this was what you came here to talk about."

"In a way it partially is," Minimus said. "I wish to move out of Swerve's room."

Rodimus narrowed his optics. "What's he been doing?" The implied threat in his voice was obvious. Minimus was quick to try and reassure him.

"Nothing that requires you to speak to him as his Captain. However we are not... getting along. At least, I am not getting along with him."

"So you wanted to talk to me about moving back in," Rodimus said, with a hint of smugness. "Oh, I'll be happy to tell Megs about the change in room assignment."

"Rodimus, my company is not a competition," Minimus said.

"No, no, of course it's not."

"In any case I intend to speak to both of you before making a decision."

Rodimus looked hesitant. "Oh. You do?"

This was... difficult. Minimus found his claws scoring slight lines into the deck plating, and stopped hurriedly. "I can appreciate that it might be difficult to be around me more closely, given that you confided in me without strictly meaning to."

"I... yeah." Rodimus looked... Minimus didn't think he had ever seen that expression from him before. "That was... I wasn't in a good place."

"Are you now?"

Rodimus laughed. It sounded wrong. "Sure. Sure. I'm good. Of course I am. It's me, right?"

"Rodimus, I was there for everything that happened with Overlord. I would argue that I am more than qualified to comment on your actions then, and following it, correct?"

"Yes Magnus... uh, I mean, Minimus."

Given the subject matter, the uncomfortable intimacy of the conversation, the heaviness of it all, Minimus was hardly about to make something of using the wrong name. "Optimus was unfair to you." It was difficult to say that, but it was the truth. "You acted with good intentions. Prowl has a way of getting under other mech's plating. He would have found some way to persuade you to take Overlord on board if his opening gambit hadn't worked."

"It doesn't make it better that he knows how to press my buttons," Rodimus grumbled.

"The vote was a reasonable way of settling the matter. If you had simply stepped down it would have caused much more disruption of our mission. The _Lost Light_ is your personal property after all. In addition, the crew has a right to have their voice heard. A democratic process may not be a traditionally Cybertronian way of doing business, but..."

"But Earth has _some_ good ideas?" Rodimus gave him a wan smile. "I wish I could believe you Minimus, but it's really hard not to think you're just saying this because you saw me moping about it."

"A little more than moping." Minimus kneaded the floor with his claws. This was uncomfortable. He wasn't used to dealing with... emotional matters. Enforcing the law did not require him to consider how other mechs _felt_ about it. "Anyway, I am saying this because it is the truth."

"Then why did Optimus..." Rodimus trailed off. Perhaps it was too painful to say out loud.

"I do not believe that Optimus was being objective. His assessment of the situation was coloured by learning of my apparent death."

Rodimus shivered suddenly, full-body, his plating clattering. "Oh man. He doesn't know you're alive yet. I never even thought about comming him..."

"No, please!" Minimus said. The words came out halfway to a bark in his panic. "He won't... Surely it will not make him feel any better to learn that his friend _is_ dead, has _been_ dead several times over before now."

Rodimus looked like he hadn't really thought over the implications of what Tyrest had done in full yet. "That's gonna do a number on his processor," he said faintly. "You were, like, his best friend. Except you've been a lot of different best friends, huh."

"And I can't be Ultra Magnus again for him now," Minimus said. "It is hard for me to admit, but I am a little afraid of his reaction."

"What?" Rodimus shook his helm in disbelief. "You don't think Optimus Prime of all people is going to give you slag about your alt?"

"Perhaps not, yet I don't think I could bear it if he did."

Rodimus winced. "I get that."

"That is partly why I wished to discuss my room-mate situation with both you and Megatron," Minimus admitted, then added hastily when he saw Rodimus' expression; "I am not accusing you of anything. I don't think that Megatron's accusations against you were warranted. However you cannot deny that I spent a significant period of time as 'Regnus', as your pet. If you fell back on old habit... If you simply forgot for a moment what I am..."

"It would be really painful for you."

Minimus nodded. "That is why I need to give serious consideration to Megatron's offer," he said. "The history there is also complicated, but it is not so fresh."

Rodimus groaned. "You know if you agree to hang out with him he's going to be nothing but smug about it, don't you?"

"I will bear that possibility in mind," Minimus said primly. "I will try to discourage him from any attitudes that are not conducive to harmony between the command ranks."

Rodimus' laugh was a little more genuine this time. "Is that where you're going next?" he asked. "To talk to him?"

"I believe he has gone on-shift now," Minimus replied. "I can wait."

"Swerve isn't gonna annoy you too much in the mean-time?" Rodimus asked with genuine concern.

"Nothing I cannot handle."

-12-

"What has Swerve done?" Megatron asked, with narrowed optics. Minimus vented out. He had been expecting the question, but was less sure he could get Megatron off target after he had latched on to the scent of social injustice.

"I do not require any help in this matter other than to settle the question of whom I will be staying with instead," he said firmly.

"You may not wish to bring the subject up with him yourself," Megatron said, "but he will never change his actions until someone corrects them."

Minimus looked away. He didn't want to admit that he had tried and failed - although yes, perhaps he had been too gentle and hesitant about it. It was harder, when Swerve wasn't being malicious. Perhaps it was past experience of trying to point out these little prejudices to mechs when they expressed them - it never seemed to go over well. He had tried both as Minimus Ambus in his first layer of loadbearer armour, and as Ultra Magnus, and he was either met by anger or accusations of being oversensitive.

He doubted it would go over any better coming from an actual beastformer.

Megatron made a thoughtful noise. "My previous offer is still open. You are welcome to share my room."

"Are you certain you won't mind?" Minimus asked, audials flicking down-and-up.

"Not at all." Megatron was quick to reassure him. "It may draw you negative attention however."

"There is a certain amount of negative attention already," Minimus admitted, venting out. "The crew will have to get used to you as co-Captain, and they will have to get used to me as well."

"There is something else you ought to know as well. Ravage is on board."

Ravage. Minimus had missed a great deal of the context to recent politics, including the run-up to Megatron's trial itself. "Is he here to keep an eye on you, or on the rest of us?" he asked.

Megatron shrugged. "Both. He only decided to reveal himself to me because of what he had overheard about you. I apologise on his behalf for the invasion of privacy."

Minimus wasn't certain how he felt about that. Of course Ravage _was_ a spy, still a Decepticon, whatever that meant these days… It was simply an extension of what he had been doing throughout the war. However he doubted he would have been any more pleased if such sensitive information about himself had leaked even during their eons-long conflict.

"Is he berthing with you as well?" he asked.

"I'm not entirely sure what he has been doing. Sometimes he will be in my room, sometimes not. I have always found it best not to question his activities too closely."

"How did he react?" Minimus asked, suddenly aching to know. "Finding out about me?"

"Better to ask him yourself," Megatron advised. "Ravage can be hard to read, but he generally prefers to avoid than to lie. An Autobot beastformer is… complicated."

Minimus vented. "He disapproves." It wasn't a new attitude towards the House of Ambus as a whole. After Dominus had published the 'Ambus Test', there had been protests, but the document had never been meant to be final. It was as liberal as Dominus could risk it being under the circumstances, and an improvement at least on what had come before it.

For the people still left out by it, that hardly mattered. He couldn't even say they were wrong.

"Ravage has always been slow to warm up to others," Megatron said. "I think the two of you would benefit from associating with each other though."

"From what you said in the med-bay I understand he has strongly-held political views," Minimus said. "I suppose it would be interesting hearing those from the source. You accused us of being unwilling to debate the points of Decepticon philosophy - I would be happy to prove you wrong."

Megatron smiled. It was odd to see it, warm and natural, rather than as a smirk on the other side of the battlefield. "Do you need any assistance moving your things in?" he asked.

Minimus shook his helm. "No, thank you. I will see you tonight."

As Megatron had said, it took several cycles before Minimus actually met Ravage, long enough for him to begin to wonder if perhaps Megatron had been having some fun at his expense. Then, as Minimus was returning from a long, peacefully uneventful shift, he was simply… there. Minimus reset his optics automatically at the sight of the cyberpanther lounging on his berth.

"I believe that's mine," he said. He was unsure what Ravage might want, but it was surely better to remain calm and considerate.

"So it is," Ravage replied. His voice was a smooth purr, but underlaid with an edge of reverb that made him sound louder and more imposing than he was. Minimus twitched an audial, interested. Was that something Ravage had been constructed with, or was it a later modification? "Are you going to do anything about that?"

"What are you expecting me to do?" Minimus asked, confused. "Are you trying to lay claim to it?"

Ravage vented, though it was very quiet. "And if I am?"

Minimus cocked his helm, thinking hard. "Are you trying to goad me into a fight? Is that what this is about?"

"Still as unsubtle as ever, _Magnus_," Ravage said. "Let me put it another way. I want to see how capable you are. I want to know if you can defend yourself."

Minimus hesitated. Ravage was well-known as a formidable Decepticon for a reason, and it wasn't just because of his stealth. When he chose to show himself he could be lethal, as a number of unsuspecting Autobots had found out over the vorns. Minimus had been back in his alt for a few deca-cycles now but he had never trained to fight in it. He could hardly compare to Ravage's long experience, and was not particularly enamoured of the idea of testing that.

Apparently Ravage did not intend to leave this up to him. He rose in one smooth, quick movement and leapt from atop the berth. Minimus barely had any time to react before Ravage's leading servos collided with him and he was bowled over. The two of them rolled over the decking, and when Minimus's spinning gyros could locate up and down again he found himself sprawled out with Ravage's jaws hovering around his throat. Sharp dentae pricked gently against the mesh covering his main energon lines.

"Dead," Ravage said, his voice seeming to come from all around, so close as it was. "That's not very satisfactory."

"I'm uncertain why this matters to you," Minimus said, remaining very still.

Ravage let go of him and backed away. "Perhaps it's alt-mode pride?" he suggested. Minimus got to his pedes, highly suspicious of _that_ as a potential motive. "Let's try again. Attack me."

"I have no interest in this game of yours," Minimus said. He was not by nature a proud mech - his life would have made such a character trait too painful to sustain. He had taken a measure of satisfaction in the strength the Magnus armour had given him, but that had all been in what it allowed him to do. He did not lord his power over other mechs. There was nothing for him to gain here, and it was surely obvious that it wasn't possible for him to win.

"Come on." Ravage darted forwards just enough to rake claws dangerously close to Minimus' optics. He shied back instinctively, and bared his dentae.

"I will not be provoked into this for nothing but your amusement," he said sharply.

Ravage eased back from his aggressive posture and vented out. "That's not what this is about."

"Yet you refuse to say what it _is_ about."

Ravage looked away. "Perhaps a little for my amusement," he admitted. "I am trying to help you though."

"Why?" They didn't know each other. Megatron had suggested Ravage had no reason to like him as yet.

"Because I don't like the idea of any beastformer going around unprotected." Ravage's tail twitched where it was curled around his paws. "I may not have any fondness for you as a _person_, but I won't have any of these bipedal frame-types thinking they can do as they like with one of us."

Minimus found himself unexpectedly appreciative. He had expected this to be something more self-serving. "Are you offering to teach me?" he asked.

"I suppose I am," Ravage said, with ill grace. "When is the last time you were in your alt, before all this?"

The question caused Minimus to pause, delving back deep through his memory core. "I'm not certain. Before the start of the war, certainly."

Ravage laid his audials down flat against his helm. "Really? You're that self-hating?"

"What? I… that has nothing to do with it," Minimus protested, shocked. "There was simply no reason…"

"Do grounders go for eons without shifting alt? Do flight-frames? I'm surprised your t-cog hadn't rusted solid!" There was a genuine anger to what Ravage was saying. Minimus felt himself hesitate in the face of it. "Our species is designed to transform. I'm hardly a medic but even I know that going too long without switching modes _hurts_. You don't need a _reason_ to transform."

"I did transform," Minimus said. "When I go to alt in the Magnus armour, all of my layers transform with me, even down to, well… this."

"What about before you had the armour?" Ravage still had a hard, suspicious look in his optics.

"I used to have an intermediate shell - House Ambus specialised in the construction of load-bearer prostheses. It had a minesweeper alt. To everyone except my spark-brother that was… me."

"You were hiding," Ravage said. "From society, from your friends, from _yourself_."

"What else should I have done?" Minimus found himself shouting, almost without realising it. "Slink around the edges like you and your friends? Powerless to change anything?"

"How about use that name for something _important_?" Ravage snarled back. "Take pride in what you are rather than pretending you don't exist! Change things, rather than publishing more so-called science to put us down in _our place!_"

"That's not what the Ambus Test was for…" Minimus started to say, but the other mech wasn't finished.

"We were not powerless. We proved that when we rose up against you _nobles_. We proved that when we took this brand!" He slammed his paw against the Decepticon marking in the centre of his chest. "You could have been with us. On the right side. Not… this."

Minimus let the silence stretch long between them, broken only by the harsh purr of Ravage's engine running hot from anger. He'd known these words were coming. Megatron had warned him to expect it. That wasn't quite the same as having ancient history and politics thrown in his faceplates, no less powerful now than it had been four million years ago.

"You hate me," he said. "I don't hate myself."

"Really?" Ravage had calmed slightly, but not by much. "It's going to take more than that to make me believe it."

"I don't understand why you want to have anything to do with me, given what you just said."

Ravage couldn't quite meet his optics. "I suppose it's because I'm angry at the system more than I'm angry at you," he said quietly. "You had something none of the rest of us did. You have that green spark, that loadbearer's one-percent spark. Even if you forged out of the ground as a beastformer it made you and your spark-brother worth something to the House that took you in. You had the _luxury_ of hiding, if you can call if that. The _prison_ is more accurate. You weren't forced to be honest with yourself like the rest of us. You were just trapped in a different way."

"You still hate that I could have used that privilege…"

"Oh, what could you have done in the end?" Ravage said, half dismissive, half despairing. "If we could have changed things without violence, the Decepticon cause would never have been necessary. But it was, and it is."

"Things are different now," Minimus insisted. "The Cause…"

"The heart of it is still the same," Ravage said sharply. "Are things really so different? Do you feel _safe_ here? We've both heard the kinds of things they say about you…"

"I can't deny that. But it doesn't mean I need to become a Decepticon and slaughter anyone who has ever said a word in ignorance…"

"Thinking of your minibot bartender? The one who just can't keep his servos off you, never mind about your consent?"

Minimus was stuck between the urges to bristle his plating, or to slick it down flat, small and unnoticeable.

Ravage made a sweeping gesture with his claws. "Sometimes boundaries need to be enforced. Which brings me back to my original point."

"Beastformer self-defence." Minimus was still not sure he wanted to do this, but… the memory of servos on his plating prickled at the back of his processor. "I suppose it would be foolish of me to refuse."

"That's a better attitude," Ravage told him. "Now I need to see what I'm going to be working with."

"You want me to try and fight you again," Minimus said wearily.

"That's right."

Minimus had the feeling this experience was going to be a painful one.


	4. Chapter 4

-13-

His new life on the _Lost Light_ settled into a kind of routine. Minimus attended to his shift-work with diligence and spent his off-time either training with Ravage, or talking to Megatron. As it turned out of the two, the training was by far the more taxing both physically and emotionally. Ravage might not want him to be helpless but it didn't mean he had any fondness for him yet. His words could be as sharp as his claws, when he used them. Minimus answered back where he could, remained silent when good conscience told him Ravage had a point. He focused on learning.

Ravage was a surprisingly good teacher. He was patient with mistakes, so long as they weren't ones of moral fibre. He explained well. Minimus found his reflexes sharpening and his confidence increasing as he became more and more settled into the physical reality of his frame. He stopped second-guessing himself. He stopped trying to move like a bipedal mech, and _listened_ to what his code-instincts were trying to tell him.

It seemed to satisfy Ravage, although Minimus still doubted that he would be capable to standing up to many mechs of larger size if it came to a fight. He felt he would at least make a better showing of himself, although hopefully there would be no need for that sort of thing anytime soon.

His lessons with Ravage did not take up the entirety of his time off-shift. Before he would have spent much of the time in administrative duties in his role as Second-in-Command, but as he had given up that role with the name of Ultra Magnus he found himself with more free time than he knew what to do with. In some ways he missed it, but in others it was a relief. With the space and distance of passing deca-cycles Minimus was able to admit that he had allowed himself to get too caught up in the minutiae. He had allowed his obsessive tendencies free reign. They had always been there, troubling elements of his coding, but usually they were not anywhere near as bad as he now realised they had been. Getting caught up in the alignment of the bolts that held the deckplating together? Really?

Had it been stress making things worse? Had he buckled under the weight of his responsibilities and the aftermath of the war, as Tyrest had certainly believed? There was some truth to that. It wasn't as though he was so much stronger now that he could suppress such obsessions - they simply were not as prominent as they had been. He did not know why.

Minimus was unsure what to do with his newfound free time. Having it was new to him. He had considered spending more time with his crewmates, but given the prejudices expressed so often in the halls he was not eager to do so. Instead he remained in his room, and found himself speaking with Megatron more and more often. He found the ex-Decepticon to be a surprisingly good room-mate and conversationalist both. It was easy to forget just who was debating old plays or novels with him. Easy to pretend the past had been forgotten.

So things went for about eight deca-cycles, before the incident with Rodimus' apparent corpse, and the disappearance of the _Lost Light_, and the quantum duplicates.

Unfortunately Minimus himself hadn't been around for most of that. He had been one of the first to disappear from their shuttle in the universe's spasm of quantum dissonance, although at least he had managed to make it to the same shuttle as Megatron and Ravage in all the confusion. He heard about what had happened afterwards from both of them, fading back into existence once the alternate _Lost Light_ was gone. Finding him dead in his intermediate shell with the Magnus armour nearby had been a clear sign that things were not as they had first thought - that they weren't standing in the _Lost Light_ of the future. Finding Overlord's corpse and - on a much happier note - Rewind alive, had finally revealed the truth. Duplicates created from the engine explosion at the very start of their quest.

This was the kind of thing one simply had to get used to when it came to life aboard the _Lost Light_.

The situation had been resolved. Chromedome had his conjunx back. When the story had first been told to him Minimus had held out hope that they could perhaps have salvaged a t-cog from his dead self, ghoulish as that might be, but it and the Magnus armour had disappeared with the rest of the duplicate matter. There would be no solution there.

"I'm sorry for that," Megatron told him, servo massive and comforting on his shoulder. "I too hoped that this might be a solution for you."

"I have not been holding out any great hope," Minimus replied, pushing past the churn of disappointment in his spark. "So it is not as though it has been dashed now."

"Still, it's not like _you_ chose this," Ravage said, which was surprisingly generous from him.

"He was worried about you," Megatron said, smiling.

"_Concerned_," Ravage replied. "Not worried. It _is_ good that this particular mystery had a good outcome though," he added. "I would have missed having a student."

"And a friend," Megatron teased.

Ravage growled at him. "A word of warning however," he said to Minimus quietly. "Avoid Nautica. She's one of the kind that doesn't think we're people."

Minimus' audials went back and he glanced over to the femme sitting next to Nightbeat. He hadn't had any cause to interact with her in the past, but he had thought she seemed a good sort from what was said about her. He was disappointed to discover that wasn't true. "Thank you for the advice."

"Now, there is something else we need to deal with," Megatron said, straightening up. "There's something I need to discuss with Rodimus."

"Thinking about Brainstorm?" Ravage asked.

"What about Brainstorm?" Minimus said.

"We must have forgotten to mention that," Megatron said. "Nautica and Nightbeat found proof that he's a Decepticon double-agent. We need to decide how to deal with that."

"If I'd known I might have made contact with him," Ravage said, tail flicking in mild annoyance. "Might have come in useful."

"Why?" Minimus asked, spark sinking. "Are you planning something?"

"No," Ravage said. "Although it's not like I would tell you if I was. No, I want to get a feel for what our people are thinking now that the war is over. Soundwave has a plan for a new settlement for us, somewhere off Cybertron. Neither of us trust Starscream not to fall to the same temptations of power the old Senate did."

And that Megatron had, Minimus carefully did not say. It was unlikely to go over well.

"There will be time to discuss the future with him once we return," Megatron said. "For now I need to let Rodimus know. Excuse me."

Minimus relaxed on the decking next to Ravage. Another _Lost Light_ adventure over. He wondered what the next would bring.

The next came far sooner than he was expecting. After they made it back to the ship it rapidly became apparent that Brainstorm was no longer on board. Perceptor eventually worked out that this was because he had travelled back in time - apparently what his briefcase had been for all along. While Perceptor's investigation had been ongoing Rodimus and Megatron had been dealing with the Galactic Council and Black Block Consortium, several of their crew had taken leave time on the nearby planet, and Trailcutter had been murdered by the Decepticon Justice Division. It was a bewildering number of events to happen within such a small amount of time, and so quickly following the mess with the quantum duplicates.

Minimus felt very small in the face of it all. He was powerless to do anything useful, and that was highly frustrating. Even after Perceptor announced what Brainstorm had done, and Rodimus came up with the idea of going back in time themselves to stop him he could not help. His spark was not of the right type. At least Megatron did not object to his presence in the mission command centre, also known as Perceptor's laboratory. That was better than nothing.

It was highly frustrating listening to reports from the past and being unable to do anything. Eventually they worked out what Brainstorm was really trying to do and tracked him down to the factory where Megatron had been constructed. Things went to the Pits after that, or so it sounded. It was hard to work out exactly what had happened from their scattered, partial communications. It would have to wait for the full report when Rodimus and the others got back. Minimus _thought _they had said Megatron was dead, and then that Whirl had put a one-percenter spark inside him that Brainstorm had been carrying around in his chest... but that surely couldn't be right.

He looked up to ask Megatron, but he was no longer in the room.

"We should go after him," Ravage said quietly. Minimus bristled his plating, startled. He hadn't even been aware that Ravage was in the room.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "What if he would rather have some time alone."

Ravage shook his helm. "Brooding isn't good for him," he said, and trotted away. Minimus followed. Ravage stopped to detect some trace of scent occasionally, but it soon became clear that Megatron was heading back to their habsuite. At least Minimus knew he would be able to get in there. The door had been keyed to his spark-signature, given the impossibility of him reaching the control panel.

He had no idea how Ravage managed to get anywhere.

Megatron was sitting on his berth when they entered, his back to them. "Leave," he said. Ravage ignored him, padding over and leaping up to sit next to him. Minimus followed, glad of his time training. He doubted he would have been able to make the jump otherwise.

"You need to talk when you're upset," Ravage said. His engine was a low, warm purr. Soothing, at least in theory.

"I would rather be alone."

"No," Ravage said, venting out. "You're just going to bottle it up otherwise. That's how planets end up burnt to cinders. Please. I know you."

"What is there to talk about?"

Ravage made himself comfortable. "What specifically is bothering you?" he asked.

"Isn't that obvious?" Megatron scoffed.

"History is... different. To how we thought it was," Ravage said. "But you are still the same."

"Am I? Or did I die back there?"

"This isn't mnemosurgery," Ravage said quietly. "Your spark has always been green..."

"I never could explain that," Megatron said, almost to himself. "It never made sense. I came online in a factory. I knew I was constructed cold, made for their purposes. I didn't know anything was strange until the first time I opened my spark. Terminus looked... afraid. Of me. He had to tell me why - we wracked our processors trying to think on how it could have happened." He laughed again, an unhappy sound. "We could never have guessed this."

"I didn't stay to hear Perceptor explain it," Ravage said carefully. "But surely this means it had been this way all along. A loop. Brainstorm always went back in time. He always killed the spark that was going to be in your body. That spark was never you - _this_ is you." He reached out a paw towards Megatron's chestplates, though not close enough to touch.

Megatron made a noise of frustration. "My greatest fear has always been that I am not me," he said.

"You're certainly the same stubborn mech _I've_ known for four million years," Ravage told him. "Now wasn't that better to say out loud, rather than bottling it up for a vorn or two?"

Megatron grunted. "I think I need to recharge," he said, looking at them both. "Wake me up when Rodimus gets back, won't you?"

Minimus nodded. This had felt a little like watching something he was not supposed to see. There was history between these two that he was not a part of - his history with them had always been violent. The other side of the war. Still if either of them had wanted him to leave they would have asked him directly, and there had been plenty of opportunity after the two had started speaking.

He supposed they trusted him. It was a pleasant thought.

-14-

Genuine calm started to return to the _Lost Light_. The fallout of the quantum duplicates and Brainstorm's quest to change the past began to fade. After the conversation he'd observed between Megatron and Ravage, Minimus kept a close optic on the ex-warlord. After shifts in the room they shared, Megatron often seemed to sink deeply into his thoughts, processor whirring away. Eventually Minimus did ask about it, concern for the mech's wellbeing winning out over his natural reticence. Megatron had smiled in a bittersweet fashion and told him he was simply mulling over the past. It wasn't an answer that stopped Minimus from worrying. He doubted any of the recent events would drive Megatron back to his old philosophy after everything, but he found he had come to care about Megatron in a way that... probably was less than justified, given what he had done over the past four million years. Still, Megatron was hardly the only mech who had energon on his servos. Minimus himself had overseen the Wreckers unit for some time, and he could not pretend he didn't know about some of what _they_ were responsible for.

Minimus felt lucky in a way though. He had made some peace with his own actions already. Apparently Megatron had not.

He spoke to Ravage about it, of course. Ravage had simply looked at him and told him, "We might be friends of a sort, but I'm not talking about that with you. If Megatron wants you to know what he's thinking, you'll know." So that was that. He knew Ravage and Megatron spoke sometimes when he wasn't there, and he was certain the beastformer would be there for Megatron if he needed someone. That had to be enough.

"I'm going out to watch Brainstorm's trial," Ravage said to him one morning, not long after. "Do you want to join me?"

Minimus looked up from the datapad he had been perusing. His paws were no less able to manipulate the screen, but he had become more adept at linking up his datacables without assistance. "I was under the impression that the trial was a private affair," he said.

"It is," Ravage replied.

Minimus put his audials back in disapproval. "Then neither of us should be there without an invitation," he said.

Ravage gave him a knowing look. "The trial is meant to be observed by those affected by Brainstorm's actions. Were you not affected? Wasn't I?"

"Not directly." Minimus was fairly sure Ravage knew that, but he could be clever with his words when he wanted to be, twisting arguments around themselves for his own ends. Apt for a Decepticon, he thought before he caught himself. No, that was an attitude for the war and for a world that was gone. Things were better now.

"Brainstorm was a Decepticon agent in any case," Ravage continued. "I have a responsibility to him, since Megatron doesn't intend to go."

"He doesn't?" Minimus was surprised. He knew that Megatron _had_ been invited, to sit on the panel in judgement no less. "Why not?"

"That's his business," Ravage said dismissively. "I want to see what drove Brainstorm in all of this. Which side he is truly on. I know you must be curious yourself. Just think, if you were still calling yourself Ultra Magnus, would they have asked you to be there? I imagine they would, so why not come along?"

Minimus had intended to object once again, but he stopped himself and thought about it properly. There was no real protocol for a trial like this. They were technically a civilian ship, so none of the military protocols applied. Equally the way things would have been prosecuted before the war could not possibly be valid. There were no mechs with legal qualifications on board save himself - and few people even knew his actual history. There was no rule to what was being done save that which Rodimus had created as Captain.

It would break no law for him to attend with Ravage. If he wasn't welcome there, surely they would simply bar his access or ask him to leave... and it might do to keep an optic on the other beastformer.

"Very well," he said.

"Good," Ravage told him. "Follow me."

When Ravage led him to the entrance of the vent system though, Minimus realised he should have expected this. Of course Ravage didn't intent to simply walk in the door. Venting out, Minimus joined him inside the narrow passages. He had come this far. It was almost an intellectual challenge in any case to make his way up, using all of his newfound agility to leap from scanty perch to perch on the frequently slick sides of the vent. Eventually Ravage led them out onto a support beam running the length of the ceiling. Looking down over the edge, Minimus saw the makeshift courtroom spread out below them.

The review panel looked rather thinly populated. Rodimus, Advocate Xaaron - ah yes, there was in fact one other mech on board with experience in the law - and an empty seat. Megatron's no doubt. Brainstorm was already seated in the dock. Chromedome was representing him, which made some sense. Chromedome had once been a beat officer, and he was one of Brainstorm's close friends.

Ravage settled down on his belly to listen. Minimus copied the posture. Things were already in sway, but by the context it didn't appear that they had missed very much.

Brainstorm was in the middle of explaining himself. Minimus listened intently, watching the reactions of the other attendees, and of Ravage. He didn't feel much better at reading the other beastformer than when he'd first met him. Was he angry that Brainstorm had apparently only joined the Decepticons to gain access to their resources? That it wasn't anything to do with believing in the cause? He couldn't tell.

Rodimus was angry. Betrayed, might be a better way of putting it. Minimus found himself wishing that Megatron _was_ there. He knew Megatron would be fair. Just. Brainstorm did not deserve to be blamed for the actions of his alternate, nor for the mere fact of his faction. What else was the peace for? Their treaties no longer held this as a crime.

At least Xaaron was there to make the unbiased, neutral argument. Brainstorm was pardoned in the end. Ravage got up, silent as he had been this whole time, and left the way they had come. Minimus hurried after him, unsure whether he should say something.

"That's that then," Ravage said, once they were out of the vents again. "With the war over I imagine Brainstorm will go back to being an Autobot. It will make things easier for him."

"Does that bother you?" Minimus asked.

Ravage didn't meet his optics. "It's no loss to get rid of someone who doesn't believe in the same things."

Minimus didn't quite believe him.

The quest continued, broken by the usual strange incidents that Minimus had come to expect from the _Lost Light_. Thunderclash's almost-death at the hand of some kind of strange space organisms, Swerve's spiral into depression and creation of a holoform replica of the planet Earth, Rodimus somehow doodling a map to Cyberutopia, and the discovery of a message-bullet from Agent 113 in Swerve's shoulder. Had he still been wearing the name and armour of Ultra Magnus he would have been responsible for managing each difficult situation as it arose - as Minimus Ambus, very little was expected of him at all.

It should have felt painful. It should have felt like he was being cut off from what mattered, like power and control were being taken away from him. Only it did not. It was... almost freeing. He did not have to worry - or at least no more than any other crew member on board the ship. He trusted Rodimus and Megatron to handle whatever came up, which in itself was something of a surprise. If you had asked him deca-cycles ago how Rodimus would cope without Ultra Magnus there to keep him on track he would have replied that the _Lost Light_ would rapidly descend into utter chaos. However that had been before he had seen Rodimus so vulnerable, judging himself so harshly.

Megatron and Rodimus seemed to be good for each other, in an interpersonal sense. Megatron set a standard of behaviour as a Captain that Rodimus made himself live up to, more out of contrariness than anything. And Rodimus was boisterous and forthright in a way that brought Megatron out of himself and stopped him from being too serious. Minimus could speak from experience on that front. He was more like Megatron in character than he would have once wanted to admit.

Rodimus had come over to him at the pre-wake party for Thunderclash, which Minimus had attended for the sake of propriety rather than because he was going to enjoy it, and asked him if he was happy. "I just wanted to know how you were coping after everything," he had asked earnestly. "We're still looking for a way to get you able to transform again, and for things to go back the way they were."

"I am well, Captain," Minimus had told him, and been a little surprised to find that it was entirely true. "Thank you for your concern."

"Hanging around with Megatron all the time isn't getting on your nerves?" Rodimus asked.

"You should take more time to come to know the mech he is now," Minimus said, although he'd known Rodimus wasn't about to take advice of that particular nature on board. As he'd expected, Rodimus brushed him off, and went back to the dancefloor. Minimus himself hadn't had any intention of embarrassing himself by attempting to dance, even if he had not been confined to his mechanimal alt. The party was hard enough without it. There had been too many uncomfortable looks in his direction. He knew which of the _Lost Light's_ crew to avoid, but had been less familiar with Thunderclash's. Nothing adverse had come of it, but there had still been a small part of him that had been afraid.

That party had come to an awkward end when the charisma-devouring creatures had attacked, but Minimus had almost been grateful for that.

So yes, things had been simple for the past several deca-cycles. There was routine, and there were the incidents that broke the routine, but which had almost become part of the expected course of events. Minimus could describe himself as happy, as satisfied, despite the dull yearning that had settled down into the background for his old life. He didn't truly believe anymore that he could ever go back to that, but he was coming to terms with his new one.

Then Rewind cornered him outside his quarters the day before they were due to reach the Necrobot's planet, looking determined.

"I want to talk to you," the camera-mech said. "It's important."

Minimus paused. Politeness decreed he invited Rewind in to talk, but the room wasn't only his own but Megatron's as well. He checked his internal schedule. Megatron was on shift right now, and wouldn't be back for a while. there was time.

"Very well," he said. "Please, come inside."

Once they were both seated, Rewind leaned forwards, laced his servos together, and said, "I want to talk about Dominus Ambus."

Minimus felt his audials go flat to his helm. "I suppose I should have anticipated this," he said. "In fact I'm a little surprised you haven't approached me sooner." It must have been obvious to Rewind when Rodimus had introduced him to the crew by his real name. Given Rewind's quest for his former conjunx... In fact, Minimus was fairly certain he had met Rewind before the war, albeit only very briefly. He and his spark-brother had been driven apart by circumstances at the time.

"We kind of had this conversation already," Rewind said. "On the other _Lost Light_, almost immediately after it came out that Ultra Magnus was you."

Another shock. Minimus reset his optics. "You know about that...?"

"I haven't said anything," Rewind told him. "I guessed this might be an alt-mode thing. Dominus never told me he had a spark-brother, although I knew him well enough to know your alt wouldn't have bothered _him_. We had to work with all those bigoted nobles though so..." He cut himself off, looking away. "What really bothers me is that _you_ knew Dom and I were conjunxes and you never said anything! You could have told me at any time that you were his brother but you didn't!"

"What did the other me say to all that?"

Rewind vented out. "Well I didn't know about _his_ alt at the time. But yeah, I asked him the same question, about why. And he said it didn't matter because Dominus was dead. Which really torqued me off, because how could you _know_ that? Things got a bit physical and Chromedome had to separate us."

Rewind did not appear likely to become 'physical' at this moment, Minimus judged. He wasn't sure of his chances if he had. Yes, he had been training with Ravage, but Rewind had survived the war as a minibot for a reason. Should he tell him about Dominus' alt mode as well? The temptation was there to share it, but if Rewind didn't already know then Dominus had kept his nature a secret from even his conjunx. Minimus had no right to break his brother's trust like that, even if it was too late for it to make any difference.

"He and I shared a connection," he said, carefully picking his words. "It he was still alive I would be able to feel it. I don't want to upset you, but I want you to be as realistic as possible going to meet this 'Necrobot'. Hoping and having that dashed is worse than not hoping at all."

"You look a lot like him," Rewind said. "In your root mode, I mean."

Now it was Minimus who had to look away. "Yes," he said. "I know."

There didn't seem to be much to say after that. He hoped the Necrobot could give Rewind an answer. He deserved closure, of a kind he could actually believe in.

-15-

The Necrobot's planet was... strange. Minimus held back from exploring with the same excitement as the others. Nightbeat headed straight for the building at the centre of it all, Rewind and Chromedome went in search of proof of Dominus' death, some of the others wandered around looking at the holo-statues and taking note of who was and was not still alive... but not Ravage and Megatron. They remained apart from the bustle of it all, speaking in low voices. Minimus watched them. This place felt like a distraction. From their quest, from... he wasn't sure.

It was because he was keeping such a close optic on the pair of them that he noticed when they went back to the Rodpod. Minimus followed, curious, and saw that Megatron had brought one of the M.A. out of the hold. Where was he going? Where _was_ there to go on this planet?

"Are you coming then?" Ravage called out. Minimus startled, plating bristling. He hadn't thought they were paying much attention to him. He approached.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"There are statues for every bot known on this planet," Megatron said. "That includes myself. I want to see it."

"But... why?" Minimus asked, mystified. What was so special about a simple hologram on a plinth?

Megatron didn't answer him. Ravage took over explaining. "Didn't you hear what Riptide and Perceptor were talking about? The flowers..."

Minimus had been distracted by the conspiratorial air between these two. He shook his helm.

"Each flower holds harvested spark energy," Ravage said. "They represent the dead, and the statues are their killers."

Minimus understood the implications immediately. "Whatever your question is," he told Megatron urgently, "surely you already know the answer?"

"Perhaps," Megatron said, his tone brooking no argument. "I still wish to see." He climbed on board the small craft, and Ravage jumped up beside him.

"Come on then," Ravage said, when Minimus didn't move.

Minimus didn't argue, or suggest that this seemed too personal to allow him to accompany them. He would have said the same about the conversation they'd let him hear after the time travelling. It seemed a strange way to show trust, a way of expressing without words. Yet he would never even think about rejecting such a gesture.

As the M.A.R.B skimmed over the fields, the scope of what they were driving towards quickly became clear. Minimus huddled into himself, quelled by the vastness of it all. Of course he knew what Megatron had done. He knew what he was responsible for. Yet Megatron had been right. Knowing was not the same as... this. Witnessing the rolling landscape covered in a sea of blue, and one small figure at the centre of it all.

Megatron stopped the vehicle in front of the statue and stepped back down onto solid earth. He looked around in silence. Minimus didn't dare speak. There was a heavy energy to the air. One could almost imagine that it was possible to feel the sparks of the dead all around them, even though the flowers were mere energy and not the sparks themselves. They were only slight remnants, less than ghosts.

Minimus crept over to Ravage. "What now?" he whispered.

He was sure that he could not have possibly been heard, but Megatron turned around all the same. He looked the pair of them over, vented out, and pulled something out of his subspace. It was... it was one of Brainstorm's briefcases.

"Why do you have that?" Minimus asked, sudden dread rising in the thrum of his spark. Possibilities flitted through his processor, none of them good. Surely it wasn't... Megatron had changed. This wasn't some... some kind of ruse, some kind of plan... He trusted...

"Insurance," Ravage said, as calmly as though this meant nothing at all. He showed no concern that Minimus had seen the briefcase, and that was enough to make him second-guess their intentions all over again. "Or it was."

"It's a path I don't need to take any longer," Megatron said, kneeling and putting the briefcase down. He started to dig into the earth with his fingers. Flowers fell from his servos, their light fading as they lost their connection to the soil.

"How did you even come to have it?" Minimus asked. He still felt uncertain, not knowing whether or not his trust had been betrayed.

"I stole it before it was destroyed like the rest," Ravage said. His next words were directed at Megatron. "Just another symptom of your urge to fix what wasn't broken."

Megatron gave a short, unhappy laugh. "Things have been broken for millions of years Ravage."

"Twisted. Warped," Ravage insisted. "Not broken. Things could have been changed. You never needed to abandon..."

Megatron cut him off with a sharp gesture of his servo. He put the briefcase in the hole he had made and started to cover it over once more. "I thought I could repair what I had destroyed if only I could find a way to achieve what Brainstorm had not. However I have examined every moment of my own history, turned it over in my processor from every angle, and there is no single point where intervening would be enough to change the war. There can be no atonement by erasure. Only by going forward."

"I... I understand," Minimus said. This was not a trick. It wasn't an attempt to restart the war, to escape justice. It was an attempt to make things right, and Minimus felt a sense of guilt for even questioning it. Megatron was his friend, if he could be so bold as to claim that word for their current relationship. He had permitted him to see this, which seemed so deeply personal. He was no longer the warlord, but a mech who had lost his way and was trying to find it again.

"Thank you," Megatron said. The briefcase was gone, hidden beneath the earth. "We can head back now."

* * *

Much to his distress, Minimus was on shift when Megatron was attacked. The moment the news reached the bridge he left his post, barely thinking about the dereliction of duty that represented. He never thought he would express such a sentiment, but friendship was more important than mere duty. Minimus raced through the corridors of the ship towards their shared quarters, recriminating himself for not being there. If he had been in their room he could have... well. He didn't know the exact circumstances. He would have liked to think he could at the very least have alerted Megatron before his assailant struck, even if he was not able to fight them off himself, but perhaps he was giving himself too much credit. The ship's alarm system kept up its wail in his audials as he ran.

When he actually arrived outside their shared room however, nothing was quite as he had expected. Megatron appeared in the doorway, his plating slick with spilled energon and dented in several places. He looked concerned though rather than angry.

"We have to call off security," he said. "They might overreact."

"Overreact?" Minimus asked, affronted. "Someone has attacked you. You're the Captain - no matter their opinions of you this is a direct assault on a senior officer..."

Megatron put a servo up, swaying lightly on his pedes in a way which did not make Minimus feel any better. "It was Tailgate," he explained.

Minimus reset his optics. "Tailgate...?"

"You see," Megatron said. "Hardly a hardened criminal. Not even a proper warrior. There has been some kind of misunderstanding here, one I have not particularly helped either."

"_Tailgate_ did all of this to you?" Minimus asked, still stuck on that point. He could hardly imagine a minibot inexperienced in the ways of violence managing to even scratch Megatron.

"No, my injuries are mostly from Cyclonus." Megatron vented out. "He thought I was going to kill Tailgate and I can't blame him. I was... reacting. I wasn't thinking clearly. Perhaps I would have done it, if he hadn't gotten there in time."

"I'm sure you would have seen sense..." Minimus was struggling to understand this situation. He could make some sense of Cyclonus' actions, but why had Tailgate even been in Megatron's room? What exactly had he been doing, and why had Megatron's instinct been to react with violence?

Someone came around the corner. Minimus caught the movement from the corner of his optic and turned to see that it was Ravage. "You had better come if you can," Ravage said. "It's not good."

The three of them took off running - or as best as Megatron could under the circumstances. Judging by the damage to his helm, Cyclonus had gone straight for the processor, and it had thrown off his gyros. Minimus dreaded what they were going to find.

Part-way there the ship rocked beneath their pedes. There was a bright flash of... something. It took Minimus' optics offline for a brief moment before his system automatically compensated and reset them. He did a quick diagnostic, but aside from that nothing else appeared to have been affected. He shook his helm to clear it and forged onwards.

"Do you have any idea what caused that?" Megatron asked. Ravage shook his helm.

They turned into another corridor and saw a scene of carnage laid out before them. Several members of security were lying prone, but by their groaning and complaints there was little wrong with them. Cyclonus was another matter. There was a slowly growing pool of bright energon beneath his still frame, and his plating had almost been torn to shreds. Sustained weapons fire. Minimus had seen it often enough over eons of war.

Was he offline? If not, then he would be very soon.

Tailgate was lying slumped over Cyclonus' body. He didn't seem to be conscious, but there were no obvious wounds on him either. _Something_ had knocked him into stasis though.

Megatron stomped over to one of the security mechs and activated his comm. "First Aid, I need you at this location immediately," he ordered. "Be ready for field repairs." He turned his attention to the mech looking up at him with sparking, damaged optics. "Exactly what did you _do_?"

The whole story came out eventually. Getaway, Atomiser, their plot... using Tailgate as their tool to provoke Megatron with his greatest fear. Minimus hardly wanted to think about that possible turn of events. If Megatron had seriously hurt Tailgate, killed him even, there would not have been a single mech on the crew willing to keep him on as their Captain. It would have worked, if not for Whirl's change of spark, and Cyclonus' swiftness.

Minimus went with Megatron when he visited the two injured mechs in medbay. They almost ran into Rodimus, who was just leaving. He hesitated when he saw the pair of them.

"Are you okay?" he asked Megatron, albeit in a rather grudging fashion.

"Well enough," Megatron replied. "The damage was not that serious. Cyclonus intended to slow me down, not terminate me."

"Yeah... he's an honourable mech," Rodimus said. "This is a real mess though. Atomiser took out Turbine and Aquabat when security went to arrest our little conspiracy. We've got the both of them locked down tight, but I don't know what we're going to do with them. It's not like we can just drop them off at the nearest prison facility way out here."

"Getaway has a reputation for escaping..." Megatron began to say. Rodimus cut him off.

"Oh, I know." He didn't look happy about it. "I've had to take measures... I didn't really want to. It's kinda extreme. But I can't let him have any chance of getting away from the consequences of what he's done. You know he was pretending to go through the conjunx rite with Tailgate? I mean there's low and then there's _low_."

Minimus pricked up his audials at that, highly affronted. The conjunx rite was a sacred bond. The idea of someone using it as a tool of manipulation... Still there was one question in his processor. "How did you come to learn the details?" he asked. "I understood Tailgate remained in stasis." Had Getaway perhaps confessed to this?

Rodimus looked over at Megatron and made a face, as though he had just realised something was not going to go over well. "First Aid said he wasn't sure when Tailgate was going to wake up, and obviously sneaking into your berth-room like that wasn't exactly in character for him... so I asked Chromedome to look at his memories so we knew what had happened."

Megatron's engine growled. Minimus couldn't help but flinch slightly at the obvious anger that was almost a physical presence around him. "You did what?"

"Yeah see, I knew you would take it like that," Rodimus said. "You know you've got issues right?"

"Is objecting to hacking into someone's processor without their consent an _issue_ now?" Megatron demanded. "You had no right..."

"If I hadn't Getaway and Atomiser would have had all the time they needed to escape!" Rodimus replied, with equal heat. "Besides it was only looking!"

"Should I trust you on that? Or take the word of your pet mnemosurgeon?"

"Look, it's done now," Rodimus said, clearly trying to end the argument. "We've got all the answers. We can focus on the _actual_ criminals here."

Megatron was still looking at Rodimus with narrowed optics, but it seemed he had decided not to press the issue further. That was a considerable amount of good grace considering the subject. Minimus had expected him to continue to argue the point, and he could sympathise. It was disconcerting that Rodimus had done something so significant without discussion with his co-Captain. He knew from past experience that Rodimus was the kind of mech to believe in the maxim of 'forgiveness rather than permission' but he had never approved of that in the past and he did not approve of it now.

"Is Cyclonus awake yet?" Megatron asked, changing the subject. "I have an apology to make to him."

"First Aid is still finishing up a bit of the welding," Rodimus replied. "Once his tanks are refilled afterwards, he should be able to bring him out of stasis. I'll get him to comm you when that happens?" he suggested as a conciliatory gesture.

Megatron nodded. "Very well. I shall return then." He turned and strode away. Minimus hesitated before going after him.

"I know this is a difficult situation," he said, choosing his words with care. "I do not wish to criticise as I cannot argue the importance of bringing the culprits to justice. However I think it would have been... better for your professional relationship with Megatron to have told him your plans beforehand."

"You saw how big a fuss he made about it though," Rodimus said. "He would have just delayed everything, and there wasn't time to argue."

Minimus could not really contest that. He disliked these kinds of situations. When it came to choosing a morally dubious action for the 'greater good', he preferred to leave such decisions to mechs like Prowl.

Not that he would have said _that_ to Rodimus.

"Are you angry with me too?" Rodimus asked.

"I can see both points of view," Minimus replied.

Rodimus vented out. "You _are_ angry."

"It is a complicated situation..."

"I guess I'll apologise to Tailgate when he wakes up," Rodimus said. "We'll see how he feels about it."

Minimus nodded. Tailgate was too good natured to hold it against their Captain, he suspected.

"Back to work then," Rodimus said, letting out a groan. "I'll see you later Mims."

It took a few moments for the nickname to register in Minimus' processor, and by then Rodimus had already left. Wonderful. At least he could feel certain it had nothing to do with being a beastformer - Rodimus shortened everybody's names. He shook his helm, and trotted off to find Megatron again.

-16-

"What a wonderful announcement," Ravage said. He had appeared in their shared quarters a few breems ago in his usual way of simply turning up, and had said very little for some time. It had seemed that he was waiting. Minimus had come to know him well enough to realise that something was bothering him, but it was better to wait for Ravage to make the decision to share rather than to ask him outright. Given who had just appeared in the doorway however, apparently it was all about Megatron.

Megatron let the door close behind him before replying. "I meant what I said." He clearly knew what Ravage was referring to, unlike Minimus.

"It's foolishness," Ravage said. "You know better."

"What do you mean?" Minimus asked, uncurling from his position up on one of the berths. "What has happened?"

Ravage growled, but it was not directed at Minimus. "Our once-glorious leader has forsworn all violence. It appears he is a pacifist now."

Megatron raised an optical ridge. "Is that really foolishness, Ravage?" he asked, while Minimus reset his optics as he tried to take this in.

"You have too many enemies... no, not just you," Ravage said sharply. "All Cybertronians do. There are plenty of threats out here amongst the stars. Given the track history of this ship in particular I have to wonder if something has badly glitched in your processor."

Megatron didn't seem to be treating this with the same seriousness as Ravage. A faint hint of a smile graced his faceplates. "I suppose I can see why you might think that. I decried the pacifism of the Autobots often enough before the Senate fell, back when they actually held to that ideal. Yet this is not the past. What might have been necessary then is not necessary now. If I cannot learn from my mistakes..."

"This isn't learning," Ravage interrupted, insistent and intense. "This is just making another mistake."

"This vow you have made," Minimus asked, "how far does it go? Personally I believe diplomacy will always be superior a solution to a problem than violence, but I sense there is more to this than just that."

For all the concern this seemed to have caused in Ravage, and the uncertainty Minimus felt himself, none of it appeared to touch Megatron. There was something almost... serene about him. The spark-deep turmoil that had been troubling him over the last few deca-cycles was gone, and this decision could only be the cause of that. Whatever Ravage might say to argue his point, Minimus doubted it would do anything to shift Megatron's opinions now.

"I will not raise a servo in violence again," Megatron said. "If I allow circumstance to sway me, then how can I claim to truly believe in my ethical position?"

"No compromise," Ravage said, with a certain amount of sarcasm. "No nuance. I thought that was everything you felt went wrong with you the first time around?"

"This is different," Megatron said, unshaken.

"What about us?" Ravage asked. "Me, Minimus, the rest of the crew? The people you are responsible for? Are you going to lift that servo to save our lives if it comes down to it? Or are we all just sacrifices to the altar of perfect ethical principles as well?"

"There must always be a way of solving things without resorting to violence," Megatron said emphatically. "That's nothing more than a false dilemma."

"We'll see about that," Ravage said, his tail lashing, and left the room at speed via one of the ventilation ducts. Minimus looked away, uncertain of his own feelings on the matter. It had been such a long time since the start of the war. He had joined the Autobots because he didn't believe in the violent protests and revolts that the Decepticons were advocating, but that wasn't quite the same as the true, pure pacifism Megatron now seemed to have settled on. Even Optimus had been _fighting_ for change before the 'Cons went further than he was willing to follow...

"What do you think?" Megatron asked him. "I value your opinion also."

"If this is what you want, who am I to say otherwise?" Minimus replied. He wasn't going to insult Megatron by suggesting he hadn't thought through all the potential consequences. He must have. If it made him happy... there had been little enough of that in any of their lives.

His reservations he kept to himself.

* * *

At least at first Megatron's new vow didn't appear to have any kind of negative consequences. As the _Lost Light_ continued its voyage and yet more typical 'situations' came up, he proved that there was a difference in his optics between taking direct action himself, and assisting his shipmates in doing what was necessary to preserve justice and help others. Megatron took over a strategic role, keeping an eye on the field of battle and directing them towards victory.

It seemed to be a good use of his abilities, and it even quieted some of Ravage's complaints, proving that Megatron didn't mean to abandon them to their fates when trouble came around. He was still doing more than Minimus could, which Minimus tried not to feel discouraged about. Training or no training, his turbofox alt was still more of a liability than an asset in a fight.

In any case neither he or Ravage could deny that Megatron appeared to be contented with his new lifestyle.

"I can't even tell you the last time I saw him like this," Ravage confided to him one cycle. "Satisfied, yes, victorious, yes, but _happy_...?" He shook his helm. "I don't know what to think."

Even the times they ended up saving organics did not seem to do much to shake Megatron's sense of serenity. It seemed too good to last... and then it was. The creeping worry that had never entirely left Minimus' processor was vindicated. Treachery. Betrayal. Mutiny. Abandonment on the planet of the Necrobot. The Decepticon Justice Division preparing to be their executioners. The _Lost Light_ gone, and no possible hope of rescue.

They had retreated inside the Necrobot's fortress and tried to make their peace with death. It was all that there was to do. There was no way out - at least no way that any bot could stomach. Nightbeat had found a quantum portal that would take them far enough away from here, but after the discovery of dozens of organic lifeforms locked in stasis in the basement of the fortress who would be left to burn behind them...

No. They had all cast their lot. They would sell their sparks dearly enough that hopefully their enemies would simply leave once the slaughter was over, no need to search for hidden survivors or cowards. It was not the ending to his life that Minimus had once imagined, but he had always expected to die in battle. He had simply thought it would be within the Magnus armour, another casualty in a long line of them, quickly replaced.

Somehow this felt better. By the end of it the war had felt increasingly meaningless. He would rather die saving these organics than in the last destructive throes of their own species.

"Minimus..." He turned at the sound of Ravage's voice. "A moment."

Minimus nodded and followed him, just outside to an otherwise unoccupied corridor.

"Swerve made a suggestion," Ravage told him. "The DJD and their allies are distracted, watching us squirm until their return. They may have left one of their ships unguarded. If we could take one and lead them away from here, we have a chance to survive as well as the organics."

"You are going to scout it out," Minimus said, making the logical deduction. Ravage _was_ the obvious choice. Yet his spark rebelled at the thought of his friend walking into such danger...

"There's no need for me to go alone," Ravage said. His optics glittered.

"You want me to come with you?"

"The great advantage we beastformers have is that no-one thinks to look for us. Outside the grass is long enough for us to pass unseen. There's no reason to worry."

"You would be putting a great deal of trust in me not to get you caught," Minimus said. He was uncertain how to feel, although he should not let emotion dictate his choices. Was it logical to go with Ravage? Would he be an asset or a liability?

Minimus suspected he would be the latter - but Ravage didn't seem to think so. He was no bleeding spark. He would not make this offer purely for the sake of friendship, unlike some mechs Minimus could name.

Ravage shrugged. "Are you coming or not?"

"I'll come," Minimus replied.

They left the building through a service hatch too small for any but minibots or beastformers like themselves. The light of this world's star overhead was soft and filtered by clouds, casting waves of shadow across the ground. Ravage moved with the shadows, crouched low, some strange randomness to his movements that made him difficult for the processor to follow. Minimus crept along behind him. Aside from when they reached the Justice Division's encampment, leaving the fortress was the most risky part. It was where all optics would be looking.

"What do you really think of all this?" Minimus asked quietly, after they were a little further away. Ravage looked at him questioningly, so he added, "The identity of those who've come to kill us, in particular."

"Are you asking if I have any kind of sympathy for Tarn's perspective? For wanting to kill Megatron for defecting?" Ravage's engine growled. "No. Besides, Tarn has never been as true to the cause as he thinks he is. He's put a gloss on Megatron's words that was never intended - he reads them as he wishes, not as they were meant. He holds the leashes of butchers and pretends he's working to free the common worker when all he's ever done is kill our own."

Minimus would hardly argue with him about that, although he was a little surprised to hear Ravage say it. The DJD were Decepticons after all, and so was Ravage even now. He supposed he had no true idea as to how Tarn and his fellows were viewed by their own faction. The old Autobot joke - never very funny - had been that they should shake Tarn's servo for doing their job for them, given how many 'cons he killed.

"There was need for a means to police our own," Ravage said, keeping his optics on the path he was forging through the grass. "It shouldn't have been Tarn. Of course I expect it could have gone either way for him when he heard that Megatron had abandoned the cause. He's always been loyal... no. Not really. Not to Megatron himself, the _real_ Megatron, but to this idea he had built of him inside his processor."

"He's not the only Decepticon to feel betrayed," Minimus said, doing his best to keep his voice neutral.

"I'm getting over it," Ravage said. "This vow of non-violence isn't helping. He has Tarn's comm frequency and I'm hoping that silvered glossa of his can talk some sense into him, but it he can't manage that..." He vented out. "I'm worried he's going to lie down in front of Tarn's cannons and let him kill him."

Minimus felt his plating twitch. It was a horrid idea, but Megatron was stubborn enough to do it. Principles mattered - as they should! Only... In the past he would have said yes, even if it led to one's death. So why did this sit so uncomfortably?

"We're almost there," Ravage said. They came out of the grass at the top of a low cliff which looked down onto the shining flanks of a newly built encampment. Kit-built barracks sat inside a perimeter wall, along with a landing pad and a solar energon generator. No space-capable vessels were in sight. "They can't have left them far off," Ravage said, lifting his helm to scan the horizon. Minimus followed his lead.

"What now?" he asked. "I defer to your expertise."

"We might be able to pick up a trail if we get closer," Ravage said. "Follow me."

They set off down the steep slope. Minimus kept his balance easily, and almost without having to consciously think about it. His processor could not help but make the comparison with his former frame. The Magnus armour would have lacked the stability to keep upright on such a gradient, not to mention that it was far from stealthy. He supposed there were some advantages of his beastmode. He could accept that.

The grass had been burned away around the encampment, stripping back the cover they had been relying upon. There were a few mechs just visible inside, but they did not appear to have been noticed. Ravage drew air in through his intakes in an odd way - deep and long which would have been too much flow for simple temperature regulation. Was this something to do with the advanced olfactory sensor bank he was rumoured to possess?

"There is a faint trace of starship fuel," Ravage told him, keep his voice barely above a whisper. "It might be enough to follow from inside."

Minimus shifted on his paws uneasily. He could not imagine that he would remain undetected if they did so.

"You can go back if you wish," Ravage said.

"No..." Minimus found himself oddly reluctant to do so. It might be the more logical course of action... but he didn't wish to leave Ravage alone out here. "I will do my best to follow your training."

Ravage purred, a soft sound of approval. He turned and crept forwards low to the ground, no more than another shadow. They traced the edge of one wall and around the side of a building. Minimus wished his colours were less obvious, but there was only so much any mech could do to alter their chromeonanites without a complete reformatting. Still, there was more cover in here than he had been expecting. Discarded building materials, crates and boxes of matériel, coils of wire... They slipped from one to another without any sign that they had been noticed.

"The scent is growing stronger," Ravage murmured. "Not the Peaceful Tyranny, but perhaps a warworld ship..."

A sharp noise from ahead stopped them both in their tracks. Minimus flicked sensitive audials, trying to pinpoint where it had come from and perhaps what might have caused it. It came again - a short sound like a yap or a bark, a mechanimal noise. There was a pause, and then a few more repeats.

"What is that?" Minimus asked.

"I can't be entirely certain," Ravage said. "I know more about our kind than true mechanimals, but for all intents and purposes we can sound basically the same. I know Deathsaurus had quite a few beastformers amongst his crew - he is one himself, after all. It could be one of them."

"Why make a noise like that? An alert?" Had they been discovered, was his real question. Yet the camp was no more or less active than it had been a moment before.

"Let's take a closer look."

The source of the sound was not far. In front of the main building there was a more open space, and on the side of it nearest the door a length of metal had been driven into the earth as an anchor point for a chain, which was itself attached to the collar of what looked like a turbofox. It was standing at alert, scanning the perimeter of the rough courtyard, its fangs bared and lubricant dripping from the corner of its jaws. A low rumbling growl came from the depths of its throat, reverberations of its engine, but it didn't seem to be aware of their presence. It was in poor condition; plating dull and washed-out, part of the plating on the left side of its face missing, and the top of its left audial gone too.

Minimus looked away, his spark churning uncomfortably. Memories of Dominus flashed up to the front of his processor. His alt had looked rather like this creature, larger and more wild in appearance than Minimus' own. It had been so long since he had last seen his brother, and even longer before that since he had seen his alt-mode. The shame of their family, always. Did he even remember it exactly? The images were fuzzy with age.

It felt different after spending all this time with Megatron and Ravage. He didn't recall if he had been angry at having to hide himself at the time, or just desperately thankful that the option had been given to them. Now... yes, he was angry at the society that had made secrecy necessary. That reduced his brother and him to mere mechanimals.

"I can't tell," Ravage said, sounding unhappy.

"Can't tell what?" Minimus asked.

"If it's a beastformer or not."

"Surely... surely it can't be," Minimus said, alarmed by the mere idea. "These are Decepticons; no matter what other atrocities they've committed they still follow a code of conduct of some warped kind do they not?"

Ravage snorted. "Doesn't it say it all that I can't promise you that any longer," he said. "Once I would have felt certain. Now when it comes to the Justice Division..."

He cut himself off at the sight of movement. A group of mechs had entered the courtyard from the far side, though they were talking amongst themselves rather than paying any attention to their surroundings. They stopped by an energon dispenser and started to draw themselves off cubes. The turbofox yapped, pulling on its chain as its attention was caught by the sight of fuel. There was some discussion amongst the mechs, not quite loud enough for Minimus to hear, but he could read the gist of it from their gestures. One bot wanted to take a cube over to the mechanimal and his friends thought he was being foolish. He eventually shrugged them off, grabbed one of the cubes and approached the turbofox.

Minimus and Ravage were hidden closer to the turbofox than to the energon dispenser, which meant they were able to hear what the mech was whispering to the mechanimal as he cautiously edged up to it.

"It's alright, it's alright, I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to help. It's not right, what they've done to you. I don't know why they thought we wouldn't notice. It's okay though. Maybe once all this is over we can... we can find some way to help you. Alright?" He peeled back the containment field from the top of the cube, crouched down, and held it out.

Next to Minimus, Ravage's claws dug furrows into the soil. Neither of them dared to say anything out loud themselves, but it seemed obvious they had both come to the same conclusions. This wasn't a mechanimal. The DJD had done to this poor spark the same thing that had been done to Minimus.

The turbofox had finished lapping up the energon. The other mech reached out a servo towards him - probably not intending to pet him Minimus thought, more likely to offer the simple comfort of touch - and the change in the beastformer was immediate. Long-finned audials snapped back and he lunged in a flash of dentae. There was a howl of pain as the other mech staggered back with long gashes through the armour plating of his forearm and wrist.

"Fine then!" The mech growled. "Get out of this yourself, see what I care." He stomped off to rejoin his friends, who were jeering at his misfortune.

"We have to do something," Minimus said desperately, once he was out of audial-range.

Ravage's engine gave a low rumble. "I know," he said. "But the mission..."

Minimus nodded. He felt the tug of divided priorities as well. However he simply wouldn't be able to forgive himself if he left this poor beastformer here. "Their assault is planned for nightfall. We can't afford to wait for the cover of darkness. There is little time to act, so we will have to take the first opportunity that presents itself."

Ravage nodded in agreement. "He's likely to be half out of his processor with hunger and fear," he said. "He's clearly not used to kindness, as that 'con just found out. He may try to attack us once we release him, but so long as we stay out of his way he should just make a run for it."

"Better that than following us back," Minimus said. "Much as I might want that, what safety could we offer him?"

"_He_ could use the quantum portal," Ravage suggested, "but let's not get ahead of ourselves."

They didn't have too long to wait. The small group of Decepticon warriors had fully refuelled before long, and set out to continue their preparations for the coming attack. The courtyard was empty again, though it was unlikely to stay that way for long. If this was the main energon dispenser for the base, it would see steady traffic.

"Let's move," Ravage said, and slunk out of cover. Minimus followed him, keeping to the shadows as well as he could. The beastformer perked up, alerted perhaps by sound or scent, and whirled to face them. He watched them approach at first, helm cocked to the side in curiosity, then growled in a half-hearted fashion. Minimus paused. His processor was still throwing up memory files of Dominus, old ones hazy with the degradation of memory creep. He tried to push them away. Dominus was dead. Of course he was being reminded of him, but it didn't mean anything more than that.

Ravage split off to circle around towards the peg holding the beastformer's chain in place. The turbofox looked between the two, his attention split and unsure who to follow, but he turned back to Minimus in the end and whined. There was something plaintive about it. He was at the end of the chain's length as it was, unable to get any closer although he clearly wanted to.

"We're here to help," Minimus said softly, unsure if it would mean anything more coming from them. He remembered how hard it had been to think when his fuel-tank had been running on fumes. His processor had shut down into survival mode, barely more than that of a real mechanimal. Speech had been little more than noise, although tone had still come through.

Ravage reached the stake and was examining it. He started to claw into the earth at the base of it trying to loosen it up, pausing every so often to try throwing his weight against it. Gradually there was movement. No more than a tremor at first, but soon the peg began to lean over. The beastformer turned his helm at the vibrations that must be running through the chain, and once there was a little slack he threw himself forwards adding his own pull to Ravage's push.

The metal peg came free. The beastformer stumbled forwards as the resistance keeping him back suddenly stopped, and then he bounded forwards. Minimus yelped and tried to dodge what he expected to be an attack, but the mech stopped right in front of him so close the snouts of their 'fox alts were almost touching. Then he nudged Minimus and purred. Minimus stood frozen and uncertain of what to do.

"Come on," Ravage said, approaching. "We need to go."

The beastformer turned at his approach and growled. Ravage pulled up short. Minimus looked over the turbofox's shoulder at his friend, not sure why the captive mech was treating the two of them so differently. It couldn't simply be down to their shared alt, could it?

"Perhaps he'll follow you out of here," Ravage suggested, keeping his distance. "I'll scout the way ahead clear."

Minimus nodded. He felt off balance. His processor was sluggish, stalling. There was some kind of subroutine loop taking up a lot of his active memory, but he couldn't spend the time to analyse it. Whatever it was, it would spit out a conclusion once it was done. He turned to go, but after a few steps the beastformer whined and stopped moving.

"What is it?" he asked, frustrated into asking despite knowing the mech wasn't able to answer. "We need to _go_."

The turbofox looked back, towards the central building, and whined again.

"Something back there?" Minimus guessed. "Something you don't want to leave behind?"

"What's the holdup?" Ravage said, no more than a pair of optics glowing in the shadows of a building ahead of them.

"I'm not sure," Minimus said, and then stiffened as the door of the headquarters hissed open. He knew the frame of the mech that appeared only from picts, but that was more than enough to make his spark gutter in its chamber.

"Pet!" Kaon called out. A spiked collar and short leash dangled from one servo. "Time to go." The electrical generators on his shoulders sparked, and Minimus felt all of his plating want to lift off of his frame as a wave of energy swept out over them. The Autobot's files on this mech had never been entirely clear on how he perceived the world without optics, but as those blank, empty sockets fixed on Minimus he realised he had just found out. Not that it was going to do anybot any good if he didn't make it out of here.

Kaon wasn't the biggest mech out there. Minimus had been training with Ravage for a reason. With the help of the beastformer this monster had been degrading like this, they could at least disable him enough to escape...

The beastformer who had just let out a happy bark.

"What have you found there Pet?" Kaon asked, as Minimus looked at the turbofox with growing horror. "Bring it."

"What are you _doing_?" Minimus said, trying to make sense of it all, trying not to believe the evidence of his own optics, but the beastformer was already lunging at him. Minimus scrambled away, bounding towards the nearest clear exit out of the courtyard, but he only made it a few strides before he felt dentae close with surprising gentleness around the back of his neck. He was yanked off his pedes, and the extra height of the other turbofox meant he couldn't gain purchase to escape no matter how hard he struggled and squirmed. The mech had him by the scruff-bar and was dragging him back to his... his Master.

"Good boy," Kaon said, as the beastformer dropped Minimus next to his pedes and put both paws on his flank to stop him getting up. "Someone deserves a treat tonight." His attention turned to Minimus, and he crouched down - for a better look? Did his sensory suite even work like that?

"What do we have here?" Kaon said. Minimus said nothing. Perhaps Kaon would somehow take him to be a mechanimal that had wandered into their camp, unlikely as that was. It was foolish to hope for, but right now he didn't have much else. "I know you can talk," Kaon told him, after a few moments of silence. "Getaway told us all about the mechs he wanted dead. Now what were his exact words... oh yes. 'I don't know if it thinks it's Megatron's pet or Rodimus', but it's a fawning suck-up either way'."

Minimus almost bit his glossae, he was clenching his jaws so tight with anger.

"Minimus Ambus," Kaon continued. "House of Ambus. He said that was your name. Such a coincidence, it seemed almost like fate. And here you are."

"What are you talking about?"

"Really? You don't know?" Kaon seemed genuinely surprised by this - or perhaps it was just a ploy to mock his lack of knowledge about... whatever it was. "Your House certainly _does_ love to keep secrets."

Minimus couldn't get a very good look on Kaon from the position he was pinned in. Most of his field of vision was taken up by the helm of the beastformer holding him down and looking pleased with himself. Traitor, half of him wanted to scream. The other half was queasily wondering how much anyone had to go through to start to accept being treated like a pet and actually start to believe it.

"Agent 113? The former Vos? Does any of that sound familiar?" Kaon continued, a slightly venomous edge starting to creep into his tone. "No?"

That looping subroutine was starting to take up more and more space in his processor. Minimus shoved it away desperately, trying to think. He couldn't... It did sound familiar. He could feel the shape of things wanting to link together but... He wanted to know... he didn't want to know...

"You don't even recognise your own spark-brother?" Kaon asked.

The loop broke open. The truth that had been creeping up on Minimus since his first look at the other turbofox could no longer be denied and ignored. He couldn't pretend anymore because the reality was too painful to accept. It was Dominus. It was his brother. Trapped the same way he had been trapped.

He was dimly aware of gentle fangs picking him up again, of being carried inside, of servos fastening something around his neck, but he let it all happen. Everything was simply... too much.


	5. Chapter 5

-17-

The corridors inside the base were low-lit although Minimus could spare no processor power to pay attention to them. He was caught in a knot of logic-loops, paralysed by the horror of the situation he found himself facing. He dangled limp from his brother's jaws and did nothing. He was taken... somewhere. A nearly featureless room. Dominus set him down on the floor gently and lay down next to him with his engine rumbling.

Kaon said something. The noise reached his audials but was nothing but white noise to him in his current state. The other mech crouched down next to him and put a servo on the back of Minimus' neck - no. On the collar he had fastened around Minimus' neck - and shook him roughly. Dominus whined, and Kaon said something else, then stood up again. He started to move around the room but Minimus could not even manage to force enough interest to pay attention to what he was doing. Some thread of thought was trying to get through to be actioned, an internal voice screaming at him that he needed to do something, that he was in a very bad situation which would only be getting worse, but he couldn't give it any priority.

Kaon did something with the collar, then left. This could not be a good sign, yet... There was nothing to be done.

Dominus started to nuzzle against the side of his neck. Minimus shook him off and turned his helm away. He felt utterly miserable. He could barely deal with the fact that this... this was his brother lying next to him, unable to communicate or transform, trapped as a prisoner for who knew how long... There was nothing that could be done to make up for the enormity of everything that had happened to Dominus and so the only possible course of action was to do nothing.

The thought was solid, inescapable, even while it felt somehow wrong. He let out a whine of his own, an mechanimal sound he hated but the only thing he had to express the turmoil in his spark.

Dominus was a warm frame pressed against his plating. Minimus could feel the vibrations of his larger engine idling - but he could take no comfort in it. Dominus let out his own whine of distress, and the nudging started up again. Minimus growled, and finally turned to look. Dominus settled once he had his attention, though concern was still obvious in his optics.

"You never told me you were going undercover," Minimus said, finding the strength to speak. That particular point was the very least of the things that was bothering him, which somehow made it easier to find the words. It had clearly been an operation requiring the utmost secrecy. He had not had any _right_ to know. Yet... it felt as though he might have been able to do something if only he had been aware. There was no logic in the thought, but there it was.

Dominus whined again. Up so very close as this, Minimus could see the ugly scar of a poorly-welded cut across his neck from where his vocaliser had been removed. It wasn't the only injury that hadn't been properly seen to, although his mistreatment had been obvious from the moment they had first laid optics on him in the courtyard outside. "How long has it been?" Minimus said, speaking mostly to himself. "How long did we leave you like this?" Why had there never been any kind of rescue operation? If Dominus had been working for Autobot Intelligence then surely _they_ should have know what had happened to him?

Or had Dominus kept his true alt secret even from them? Had they honestly believed him dead?

There was no reaction to his questions. Dominus laid his helm over Minimus's neck and started to preen the plating there where it lifted away from his protoform in a ruff of photovoltaics.

"You recognise me," Minimus said. "You know me. But do you understand anything I say?"

Still no reaction. His spark felt like it was tearing apart. He supposed it had already been torn apart vorns ago when he had felt his spark-brother gutter out - or at least that was what he had believed he'd felt. Instead it had been a symptom of this, of the torture his brother had been put through. How close had the DJD pushed him towards death?

"It's not too late to save you," he said. He was desperate to believe it. "It can't be. I just need to get you home." The question was _how_, particularly as Dominus could not understand what that meant. So far as he seemed to think his home was at the side of his monster of a master.

There was a weight around Minimus' neck; in the turmoil he had barely been aware of how heavy the collar was. When he moved there was a tug at his nape and a sharp high sound - a chain jingling. Leashed like a mechanimal just as Dominus had been outside. Dominus was still wearing a collar himself, but nothing more than that. He was free to move around, which meant Kaon didn't expect he would make any attempt to escape.

Ravage was still out there. Kaon didn't know about him. Ravage wouldn't leave him here, Minimus was sure of that. There was still hope of rescue.

The door slid open. Minimus jerked upright to look at it. The mess in his processor had started to burn itself out. A little of the fight was coming back into him. Kaon entered as he had expected, but the mech following behind him was far larger and more imposing. Minimus did his best not to show his fear. The malice the purple mask contained seemed to sneer at the mere attempt.

Tarn. He should have been expecting this. That didn't make the reality any easier.

"What _do_ we have here," Tarn said. His voice was as smooth and melodious as the rumours suggested. "The Pet appears to have captured a spy."

"Is that all he is to you?" Minimus asked. He was trying to prepare himself for the pain he knew was coming. The idea was not unfamiliar to him. As Ultra Magnus he had been a target. Part of the echelons of command. Capture was always a possibility, and if so, the inevitability of torture. He had been given some training in what to do, yet against Tarn's outlier ability he had no idea whether it would be enough.

If he could distract them, feed them lies, delay just until the time for the attack came and went...

Kaon let out a low whistle. Dominus pricked up his audials at the sound and leapt onto his pedes, bounding over towards the mech. Kaon put a possessive hand on his helm. Horrified, Minimus could not look away much as he wanted to. He could not bear to see Dominus debasing himself this way yet he also knew that no other choice would have been given to him. Disgust and pity and recrimination twisted uncomfortably inside him.

"He took our oaths," Kaon said. There was something sharp in his voice. "We trusted him. He was one of us. Then he betrayed us utterly." Was he... genuinely upset? It certainly wasn't simple anger. Minimus had always imagined the Justice Division as just another group of murders and sadists thrown together by the war, never as... what? Comrades? Brothers in arms? Friends?

Tarn laid a servo on Kaon's shoulder. Comforting? The idea seemed alien in this context. "We are used to dealing with traitors to the cause," he said. "Your brother's treachery was particularly egregious. Our usual methods of punishment seemed insufficient until Kaon suggested this."

Minimus desperately wanted to ask how they had even known about Dominus' alt in the first place, but he was surprised enough that they had even bothered to answer his question at all. Pushing did not seem wise. Yet there had to be a reason they had decided to justify themselves to him... and it was that. Justification. Tarn was meant to be a fanatic to the cause, and doing this to a beastformer was a betrayal of what the Decepticons allegedly stood for.

"Does Megatron know about what you've done?" he asked.

The reaction was immediate. Oh, Tarn did his best to control it but he could only throttle back the enraged roar of that powerful tank engine so quickly. Optics flashed a little plasma behind the concealment of the mask. "How dare you presume his opinion would matter anymore!" Tarn growled. "What we have done to your brother will pale in comparison to what that greatest of all traitors shall suffer."

Minimus could have pushed it, but he did not truly wish to die here. Not unless there was no other choice that would keep his friends and crewmates safe, but if that time did come then at least now he knew what to say to anger Tarn enough to snuff his spark before he told them what they wanted to know.

"That is," Tarn continued, regaining his cool, "if he isn't dying in a field of flowers somewhere on this pitiful planet." Some of Minimus' surprise and alarm must have shown, because there was a certain lilt of pleasure to Tarn's next words. "Oh, were you not aware of that? I understand from your ship's own dear traitor that you had become close to Megatron over deca-cycles past. Perhaps that's why he thought his skill with words could save him. It can't. There can be no words in recompense for his surrender. For his weakness and the rot that has taken his spark. He came to convince me and I shot him where he stood."

Kaon twitched, and Tarn seemed to rouse from whatever image of revenge he had started to lose himself in. "Yes, of course," he said. "We are all here for a reason naturally."

"I don't intend to help you kill my friends," Minimus said. It was a pointless attempt at bravado and he knew that, but he could not let this happen without some kind of protest.

Tarn might have been smiling under the mask, but it was impossible to tell. There was a smile in his voice anyway, a cruel one. "You will not have any choice." The register of his words were changing, becoming even smoother, almost hypnotic. Minimus found himself unsteady on his own pedes as though he had taken a blow to the gyroscope. "I can find the resonance of any spark. I am told the pain is unlike anything else you can experience. I will drag you through agony after agony. You will say anything to make it stop. You will beg me to gutter your spark and permit you the relief of death."

Minimus could feel it happening as he spoke. It wasn't something experienced in his frame or in his processor. He could have understood it then, and that might have made it easier to bear. As it was he felt it as a crushing inside of his chest, as something more emotion than anything else. He had been spark-broken and aching already and had never thought he could feel any worse but somehow this _voice_ reached down into the very heart of him and _tore_.

The voice - and the pain - cut off suddenly with a shout. Minimus reset his optics and lifted his helm to see what had happened. Dominus. Dominus had... must have reacted to his agony. Whether it was simply that he had cried out or whether there was still enough left of the bond between their split sparks that his brother had been able to feel some of that pain too he could not know. It had been enough though for him to perceive it as a threat and to identify the source of that threat.

Tarn grabbed Dominus by the collar and tore him away from his arm where those sharp dentae and powerful jaws had latched on deep. Dominus growled and scrabbled with claws to get away, energon dripping from his fangs and from the plating which had been ripped open. Tarn cursed - in the Primal Vernacular, slightly oddly - and threw Dominus away from him. He hit the wall and slid down it, but recovered from the blow quickly. He was up and snarling almost immediately, darting forwards to hover protectively in front of Minimus. Tarn had brought his other arm and its twin fusion cannons up to track him, circuitry activating with a high-pitched hum, but he hesitated when he saw Dominus' position. Not willing to risk hitting Minimus and killing their source of potential information.

It was enough time for Kaon to put his own frame in the midst of the sudden stand-off. He leaned in, his chest uncomfortably close to the barrels of the cannons, and spoke quietly to Tarn. The room wasn't large enough for real secrecy though, not with Minimus' audials as sensitive as they were.

"Sir, _please_," Kaon said, with unmistakable desperation. "Don't... he didn't mean it. I'm sure he didn't. He just doesn't understand what's happening and he obviously knows the Autobot is important to him..."

"He shouldn't know even that much, after the work we put into him," Tarn replied. He let the cannons power down though, unable to keep cycling the charge without committing to firing.

"Even mechanimals have family units," Kaon said. "I'm sure that's all he's reacting to."

"Protecting him doesn't look good for you Kaon."

A pause. "I understand," Kaon said. "Even so..."

Tarn held up a servo to cut him off. His helm twitched in the tell-tale motion of someone reacting to a message on their internal comms. "Enough of this," Tarn said. "I'm needed elsewhere. Whatever scraps this creature could give us will make little difference to the coming battle. We will overwhelm them and crush them. This was no more than a distraction. There will be time to entertain ourselves later on."

Kaon didn't ask what had called his leader away - perhaps he didn't dare. His processor was evidently still on only one topic. "And the Pet?" he asked.

"Once I will forgive," Tarn said. "No more. Perhaps your Pet needs to be reminded of his training."

"It won't happen again," Kaon assured him.

Tarn left. Electricity sparked over Kaon's shoulders, and then a few moments later he followed. Minimus let the tension drain out of his frame. He did not give much credence to the concept of luck nor believe that Primus favoured his children with his own personal attention, but that had been fortunate indeed. He approached Dominus with caution and tried to get a better look at his injuries. His brother watched the door a little longer while he did so, then flopped down onto his side with a slight wince of pain.

Plating was buckled in along one side of Dominus' abdomen where he had hit the wall, but thankfully it did not look serious. Even so Minimus worried. Would anyone here bother to see to it, or leave it to self-repair as they seemed to have left everything else? A crimped or torn line somewhere under there could have long-term consequences.

The door hissed open again - Minimus bared his dentae in that direction but it wasn't one of their enemies coming back. Ravage stood in the doorway, his red optics raking over them quickly, and indicated they should follow him with a jerk of his helm.

"They will not be distracted for long," he said.

Minimus leapt forwards but he had forgotten about his chain. He was brought up short of the exit with a sharp jerk. "What did you do?" he asked Ravage, as the cyber-panther came over for a better look at his shackles.

"Stole Deathsaurus' datapad," Ravage replied. "Tarn thinks he's called for a strategy meeting, but he'll discover the ruse soon. It was as best I could do at short notice."

"More than I'd hoped for," Minimus replied honestly. He tried to turn for a better look at the chain but he couldn't manage to see it where it fastened to his collar. The other end of it was welded onto the wall - no hope of getting it free from there.

"I shouldn't have asked you to come with me," Ravage said. "I was too confident; I thought I would see any danger before it came this close to us."

"You offered and I accepted," Minimus replied. "I knew my own abilities. If anyone was over-confident it was I."

Ravage's engine rumbled. He was quiet, thinking. "I suppose there are some advantages to servos rather than claws," he said after a while, almost to himself. "Let me try..."

The tip of his tail opened up, revealing a data-spike inside. The retracted armour made hooks and spines, things that might catch and pull better. Minimus saw what he was intending, and held still as Ravage turned and did something delicate at the back of his neck. The kliks dragged on, but finally there was a small metallic sound and the chain fell free. Minimus shook himself and looked over at Dominus, who had watched all of this passively.

"You saw what happened the last time," Minimus said. "I don't know if he will come with us past the perimeter."

"There was a familiar scent on the wind as I followed you inside," Ravage said. "I can guarantee nothing, but if we aim for that scent we might be able to find some assistance."

Minimus wanted to ask for more details, but he trusted Ravage. If he was reluctant to say more it was perhaps only because he did not want to inspire hope that might only be dashed. He followed the cyber-panther out into the corridors, hoping Dominus would follow. His brother gave a short yip, perhaps communicating curiosity, and got up to trail after him. The bond of family was still there, even if Dominus did not truly understand it.

The corridors inside the base were sparse with nowhere to hide. It was only chance - or perhaps some other ruse Ravage had devised - which kept them clear of enemy mechs, and at least the kit-built building wasn't large so reaching an exit was the work of under a breem. Ravage paused as the outer door opened before them.

"What now?" Minimus asked.

"He was hesitant before, but there wasn't enough time to see whether he would have decided to leave with us eventually," Ravage said. "Perhaps so long as his _owner_ doesn't show up, he will realise that he has the opportunity to be free. If not... in the end at least we gave him that chance."

Minimus was startled by the cold calculation of Ravage's words but a thought struck before he could protest. He did not actually know if Ravage had been close enough to hear what Kaon had said to him, when he had first been captured. Ravage might not know that this turbofox was more than simply any unfortunate beastformer. Surely he should explain... but it was hard to even contemplate saying the words.

Ravage scanned the area outside and started to make his way across the brief open area towards cover. They had come out from a different side of the building, rather than that facing the courtyard, and there was more here to hide them. Minimus turned to his brother and nudged against the side of his neck.

"Please," he said very quietly, knowing that Dominus could not understand him but needing to speak anyway. "Please, come with me."

Then he turned and followed Ravage.

Dominus did not move - or at least, not at first. The indecision and the pull of 'home' were both clearly weighing on him. As before, he turned and whined, circled around, looked between Minimus and the open door back inside. Yet this time there was no Kaon coming out to fetch him. No visible reminder of what he was leaving behind. In their new hiding place Ravage's tail lashed impatiently, but he still waited for the conflict inside Dominus to resolve. He might have spoken about saving themselves, but in his spark he clearly felt just as torn by the need to rescue the other beastformer as Minimus did, albeit for slightly different reasons.

Eventually Dominus broke. He leapt out and over to them, and Minimus offered up a brief prayer to Primus in thanks. He thought there might be other periods of hesitation on their way out, and Dominus did not understand the need for stealth, but it was still _something_.

"This way," Ravage said.

Perhaps Primus truly had put his Hand over them to guide and guard them, for the way remained miraculously clear. Though Dominus looked back often, and even tried to grab Minimus by the scruff-bar again at one point to drag him back, Minimus did not give him the chance. Family, as much as his brother could still recognise it, pulled Dominus on. Then they were outside the walls of the base, back into the thick, long, organic grass that hid them from view. Only then could Minimus start to relax again.

"Where is this scent you spoke of following?" he asked Ravage.

"Close," Ravage replied. He cycled air through his system again, as he had before they first risked their foray into enemy territory. How long ago had that been? By the quality of the light, not as long as it had felt.

The trail led through the field to a small copse of trees a short distance away. Minimus kept his audials alert for the sounds of pursuit, but none came. It appeared that their escape had not yet been noticed. They might actually have gotten away from this.

Of course it would do no good in the long run. There was still no way off the planet, and so they had only postponed the end...

There was a ship on the other side of the trees. Minimus stopped the moment it came into view, struck by the sudden wild rush of hope that hit him like a wave. A ship... space worthy? It looked like it could be. This was what they had come looking for! Yet it was not a Decepticon model, so who exactly had brought it here?

There was little time for him to wonder. Ravage was already making for the gangway, lying invitingly open before them and Minimus followed, although rushing in without scouting it out further seemed to be foolhardy.

"Empty," Ravage said, as Minimus joined him inside. "Where have they gone?"

"Where has who, exactly, gone?" Minimus asked.

"By the scent of it, Ratchet and Drift," Ravage said. Minimus' audials flattened in surprise.

"Why on earth would they be here? Even if they were looking for us how did they find us?"

"Something to ask them if we can locate them," Ravage said. He made his way for the cockpit. "Let's hope their ship has some way to track them."

"All too easy to fall into the same trap we did," Minimus said, as his hope started to be leavened with a heavy dose of dread. They would be as unaware of the danger waiting for them as the crew of the Lost Light had been when they first arrived.

Ravage nodded. For his own part Dominus appeared to have accepted this as their intended destination and was making himself comfortable. One less thing to worry about.

Thankfully the ship was a model they both knew how to fly, and it responded to the Autobot codes Minimus had available. Once inside its systems he found that Ratchet had indeed been cautious enough to take a locator beacon with him when he had left, though what that beacon told them was less reassuring. Indeed it might even be part of the reason that their escape had been easier than anticipated.

"It appears you are in for a second rescue mission today," Minimus said. Ravage grumbled something to himself, but didn't argue.

"A fair repayment for the ship," he replied.

All told, retrieving Ratchet and Drift from their pitched battle with Decepticon forces did not go entirely according to plan. Yes, there were minimal injuries and they all managed to escape, but the ship was shot down in a lucky hit to the engines from Tarn's plasma cannons. The hope of a way off this planet that would still keep the sleeping, stasis-locked organics safe was destroyed with it.

Minimus was exhausted by the time they returned to the Necrobot's fortress, and barely able to think about answering questions. Naturally however he did not have a choice about that.

"Anyway I'm glad you all made it back safely," Rodimus said, once he had finished greeting Drift and Ratchet and explaining the situation. Welcoming his friend had held a kind of bittersweet feeling that Minimus found hard to watch, close at it was to his own emotions after rescuing Dominus. "We got kind of worried when you didn't come back after a few cycles. I guess things didn't go as planned - but you brought us... a prisoner?" He gestured at Dominus, who was hovering near Minimus protectively with flashes of dentae at anyone who got too close. "Is he uh... like you?"

"A beastformer you mean? Yes." The heaviness in Minimus' spark did not go away. "And he isn't a prisoner."

"So he's not the so-called sparkeater that Kaon sets on people," Rodimus said, then shuttered his optics as the implications of what he had just said hit him. "No, I'm sorry, that was... stupid of me. Insensitive. Not like a beastformer would ever _agree_ to be led around on a chain and treated like a mechanimal so _obviously_ it's not what I was thinking."

"You're learning at least," Ravage said, which for him was rather generous.

"So uh, you rescued him I guess?" Rodimus asked, and addressed Dominus. "It's alright, you're... well not safe. Safer, now. Sorry. What's your name?"

In the silence and low growls from his brother that followed Minimus said, "He can't... speak."

"Like the whole Tyrest thing?" Rodimus made a face. "Yikes. Wait til ol' Megs hears about this."

"Yes, where is he?" Ravage asked. Rodimus looked no happier.

"In medbay," he said. "It's not... great. Actually, Ratchet, I know I should give you more of a chance to get to grips with what the frag is going on here but we could really use your help there - 'Lotty got him stabilised but as good a medic as she is, Megatron is kind of weird anatomically..."

Ratchet gave a loud ex-vent. "Sure," he said. "Why in the Pit not. Just point the way."

Ravage looked torn between the desire to go with him, and the duty of reporting what had happened during their mission. Minimus nodded at him. "It's fine. Go. I can handle things here."

Ravage inclined his helm in thanks and slipped away. Minimus wished he could go with him. He had hoped Tarn had been lying about what had happened...

"So I guess the DJD are a big bunch of hypocrites," Rodimus said. "What's new there? Do you know who this guy is though? Or is assuming you would kinda prejudiced."

"Under normal circumstances I would suggest it would be," Minimus said. "In this however..." He had to steel himself to admit it. A quick scan of the small welcoming committee showed that Rewind was elsewhere. Good. Good. This wasn't the kind of news to break to a former conjunx in public. "You recall I have a brother."

"Yeah..." Rodimus said, not seeing where this was going, before his optics went wide. "Wait. You said _have_. I thought you were sure he was dead?"

Minimus couldn't quite look at him. Dominus whined softly, picking up on his distress. "Yes. I believed that. Until today, until now."

"You can't mean..." Rodimus was starting to understand.

"Dominus infiltrated the DJD," Minimus explained. "He was Agent 113. I didn't know any of this - I would have said something."

"I know you would have." Rodimus was doing his best to sound gentle, understanding, but it did not make it any easier. "So... your brother's alt is a turbofox like you, huh. That's cool - except I remember hearing about the DJD over the years and I don't remember them having a turbofox member just... just the 'sparkeater'."

"Dominus has a loadbearer spark just like mine," Minimus said. "He's always worn a shell just as I did."

"So the DJD found out about that somehow. Surely that wouldn't be something worth doing _this_ over - I mean, they're meant to be 'Cons..."

"They found out that he was a spy."

"And they didn't kill him?"

"This is worse," Minimus said, his voice flat.

Rodimus was quiet for a moment. "Is there anything we can do?" he asked.

"I very much hope so," Minimus replied.

"We'll ask Ratchet once he's finished with Megatron," Rodimus said. "I'm sure he'll be able to think of something."

-18-

Waiting dragged on interminably. Ratchet wouldn't allow them into the room repurposed as a medbay until he had finished operating, and although Minimus certainly understood the rationale behind that it did not make it easier to bear. His processor kept going back to Tarn and the malevolent pleasure in his voice as he described what he had done - and intended to do - to Megatron.

Should Minimus be surprised that he felt so agonised, so anxious, so upset? It was Megatron in there lying close to death, the warlord who had driven their species nearly to the brink of oblivion, who had so many deaths on his servos that they covered a vast field in flowers on this very planet. Yet he would be lying to himself if he pretended any of that mattered to him. It had stopped mattering some time ago. Megatron was his Captain, his room-mate, his _friend_. He cared about him.

Ravage was as distressed as he was, if perhaps better at hiding that. Even so his tail lashed and his claws left scratches on the deck plating. Neither of them spoke. What was there to say?

The astroseconds continued to move onwards into breems, stretching out in his perception despite the steady tick of his internal chronometer.

At last Ratchet opened the door and called them inside. Dominus followed on behind Minimus and Ravage, still wary. He might have accepted being here but it was clear he did not much like it.

"I've done what I can," Ratchet said. "Megatron will be fine for now, but I don't advise him doing anything too strenuous when he wakes up." He vented out. "Not that we're going to have much of a choice about that."

"Shouldn't you tell _him_ that?" Ravage said, slightly sardonically.

"As if he's going to listen to me," Ratchet replied. "He might listen to you though."

Ravage shrugged, a lithe ripple across his shoulders, and leapt up onto the edge of Megatron's med-berth. Megatron was still in medical stasis, with fresh welding a bright splash of silver over the centre of his chest. Over his spark, Minimus thought, chilled by how close he had come to offlining.

"So, you have another patient for me?" Ratchet said, wiping his servos on a rag. His optics moved over Dominus' form with a professional regard. "The DJD did this?"

Minimus nodded. He didn't trust his voice.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," Ratchet said. "What a pack of hypocrites."

"Indeed," Ravage said, baring his dentae.

"So, let's get a closer look at you," Ratchet said, approaching Dominus cautiously. The wariness was warranted - Minimus had seen how easily his brother had torn thought Tarn's war-grade armour when he felt threatened - but that didn't meant he enjoyed seeing it. Dominus started to growl as Ratchet came closer, and Minimus shoved his snout against the ruff of plating over his brother's neck in an effort to calm him.

"It's going to be alright Dominus," he said quietly.

"There's a lot here that needs a medic's attention," Ratchet said, "which any fool could see just by looking. Most of it isn't urgent though, you'll be glad to know. I have to ask... you suspect what was done to him went further than what Tyrest did to you Minimus?"

"He doesn't seem to understand things the way I did. There was a period when I was low on fuel where I could barely think like a sentient mech, but Dominus had a cube of energon not long ago. I do not think this is as simple as that."

Ravage stirred from his position up by Megatron. "I didn't think even Tarn would be capable of it."

"You know what this is?" Ratchet asked him.

"Domestication." Ravage bit the word out, disgusted. "The Senate's last tool when even taking voice and alt wasn't enough to break the spirit of those who dared to defy them."

"I heard whispers..." Minimus said. His spark felt low, barely pulsing inside its chamber. "Never more than that. I thought it could not possibly be real."

"Like shadowplay couldn't be real?" Ravage sounded bitterly amused. "No. It was real enough. Do enough internal damage to the processor and you end up with... this. Not the first kept pet that used to be a person. Monstrous isn't it. And Tarn chose to become just such a monster, like those we rose up to fight in the first place."

"Not until Kaon suggested it," Minimus said. "None of them are innocent here." He was desperately, deeply angry.

"Do you know how to fix it?" Ratchet asked. "I can make him a new vocaliser, repair the old damage... but if this is processor work we're talking about... I'm a generalist. That sounds like it needs the attention of a specialist."

"Why would anyone bother to learn how to fix it?" Ravage said, voice still sharp and brittle with his own ancient rage. "Perhaps your mnemosurgeon can figure it out. Perhaps he's _seen_ something like this in the past."

"Chromedome hasn't..." Minimus hesitated. What did he really know about what Chromedome had done for the New Institute, other than that he regretted it, and that he wanted to find some way of making up for it? Of all of them, the only person who knew much about Chromedome's past was Rewind...

"I haven't told Rewind yet," he said, caught by the sudden realisation and the guilt that came with it.

"That's not going to go well," Ravage said.

"Do you think I don't know that?" Minimus replied. "He has the right to know. He's Dominus' conjunx."

Ratchet vented out. "I'll get them both down here then," he said. "What a mess."

* * *

"Dominus?" Rewind said, voice trembling, optics fixed on his former conjunx. His expression had gradually morphed into horror as Minimus explained everything, and his visor flared with drifts of heated plasma. "Dominus do you... do you recognise me at all?"

Dominus looked him over with some degree of curiosity, but it was obvious that there was nothing personal behind it. He was simply taking note of the mechs in the room with him, of potential threats and potential sources of help, or food, or other things his instincts might tell him he needed. No more than that. Minimus could hardly bear to watch this warped version of a reunion, but there was no use in hiding from reality.

"Rewind I... I'll do whatever I can to fix this," Chromedome said. "I can't believe after all this time..."

"I was actually starting to believe it - that he might really be dead," Rewind admitted. "Maybe it's a little better to know why he never contacted me. Because it wasn't safe... and then because he couldn't at all. Better than thinking he had stopped caring about me."

"Was that really what you were thinking?" Chromedome asked softly.

"Yes," Rewind said. "It would have felt disloyal to admit it before. But... Domey. We barely know what they did to him. This 'domestication'... I've heard of it but I don't have any information about it. No files, nothing. I want... there must be something we can do to bring him back but it might not be anything we can do here and now. Not safely."

"He's your conjunx. If I can help him then..."

"_You're_ my conjunx too," Rewind said desperately. Minimus looked away, trying to be as unnoticeable as possible. This conversation seemed like something that should be private, but he could hardly leave now. Dominus was still following him around everywhere in any case. "Are you thinking... I don't want to gain Dominus just to lose you! Just because I've found him again doesn't mean that everything _we_ are is meaningless!"

"He was yours first," Chromedome said. "You've never stopped looking for him."

Rewind let a sharp sound of distress, like electrical discharge. "That wasn't because I didn't want you! You're not some kind of... replacement. Some kind of stand in. I love you. My spark is big enough for you both. This was never about getting him back so I could let you go."

There was silence for a long moment. Finally Chromedome spoke again.

"I understand that none of us know entirely what has been done to Dominus. I know looking into his processor and trying to fix it would be dangerous. I still want to try. Rewind, I promise, I will be _careful_. I don't even know if it's something that can be fixed - but what kind of conjunx would I be to you if I didn't at least look?"

"I... I suppose," Rewind said. "I'm going to be there the whole time though, and so is Ratchet. Alright?"

"Alright."

As Chromedome's needles slid home in Dominus' sedated processor, his frame jerked with a gasp of air forced through his vents and his optics flickered. Rewind and Ratchet both took alarmed steps towards him, but he relaxed again after a moment raising a hand to wave them away.

"It's fine," he said, though he sounded strained. "It's more of a mess than I expected in here. Different... I'm not sure how to put it into words."

"Don't get dragged in," Rewind said. "The moment I think you're pushing yourself too far I'm going to make Ratchet pull you back, understand?"

Chromedome nodded, and bent forwards over Dominus again. There was no external sign of his efforts. Minimus himself had little idea about what mnemosurgery felt like, from either side of it. He supposed there had to be some kind of similarities to cabled interface, yet there was nothing at all suggestive or erotic about what he was watching now. Was Dominus aware of Chromedome's presence? How much, exactly, could Chromedome see and experience of Dominus? His memories? His personality?

"Just take it slow Domey," Rewind said, hovering close to his conjunx. "Nothing dangerous."

"This isn't just reprogramming," Chromedome said. "There's physical damage to his processor as well - I can feel the errors from the burnt out sections. I could re-route around it, try and rebuild from what they haven't managed to wreck, but..."

There was something about Chromedome's tone that meant nothing good and Rewind could obviously hear it as well. "What is it? Domey?"

"I don't know if he'll be the same afterwards. He might not be the same Dominus you remember."

Minimus flinched. He was and was not a part of what was happening here. Dominus was his split-spark brother, but Rewind had been his conjunx. That was a merging of their lives by choice rather than mere fate or the hand of Primus, whichever option you believed. Minimus had every right to be here and see this through, yet he still felt odd. Awkward.

Was it guilt? He and Dominus had sparks vibrating at the same frequency, forever entangled in quantum bonds. It seemed he should have known about all of this. Should have been able to reunite Rewind with his conjunx much sooner than this.

"Even if you could repair everything exactly back the way it was, who's to say he would be the same Dominus I remember," Rewind said. "We've all changed. The war changed us. We had to do things we could never have imagined; Dominus maybe even more than most of us. Infiltrating the DJD must have come with a price. We'll... we'll just need to get to know each other again. Repairing the domestication - it is possible though?"

"I think so," Chromedome replied. After a brief pause he continued, "If I go deeper, deep enough to start the repairs, it _is_ going to be dangerous. If I can't do it, or worse, if I can only do it half-way, then I might make things worse. Coming up out of his processor again might be traumatic enough to kill him."

"What about the danger to _you_?"

"There's that too," Chromedome said, with an attempt at humour.

"Is there anything that will help?" Rewind asked. "Resting more first, topping up with energon..."

"Reading the research of whoever figured out how to do this kind of thing in the first place," Chromedome said. "Tarn or Kaon must have something. I can't imagine they did all this by trial and error, or that either of those other two brutes on their team had anything to do with it."

Rewind glanced over at MInimus.

"There are only a few more orns before the attack," Minimus said. "Even if we could go back, there isn't time." He wanted this to work just as much as Rewind did, but no matter how he thought about it he couldn't see a way. It was also assuming the DJD had even _kept_ files of that kind.

"There's no point in waiting then," Chromedome said. Rewind leapt forwards to put his servos over Chromedome's.

"Wait, wait, you just _said _it was dangerous! You haven't gone too far in yet, just disengage and we can think about what we're going to do properly."

Chromedome shook his helm. "Like you said, we don't have a lot of time. We're almost certainly all going to be dead soon anyway. At least this way there's a chance I die having done something good again with these slagging needles. You get to die having seen your conjunx again. Minimus gets to see his brother."

Rewind looked away. He said nothing, unable to find the words for what he was feeling. Minimus was having the same experience.

"I'm going ahead," Chromedome said. "If it all goes bad, kill the DJD in our memory."

"We're going to be killing them alongside the both of you," Rewind said, but it didn't sound like his spark was in it.

* * *

There were... memories.

The Pet growled to itself. It was afraid, and it hated that. There was a threat, but it didn't understand it. Something was different. Something was changing. Change happened a lot in its life and sometimes it was good and sometimes it was bad, but it never had any control over that.

Where was Master? Master would protect it, or Master's pack would. If not, if Master was in trouble, threatened, then it would do the protecting. That was the way it should be. That was the way it had always been.

No. Not always.

The Pet stirred uneasily. It did not have a strong grip on past and present and future. Moments slid into one another around it, but that did not bother it. Now it was... remembering. It was unfamiliar and... and it was scared.

That was the threat! But how was it going to kill this threat? It could not be bitten. It's claws could do nothing to it. It could not be frightened off.

There was a sudden flood of sadness, but it was not the Pet's sadness. It was alien, other. Again the Pet whirled around trying to find the source of what was happening, but there was nothing.

Where was it? Master was here. That made it feel a little better. It was in the den, but... it was different. It was standing on two limbs not four, and it was bigger. There was talking. The Pet did not understand what was being said - but the foreign _thing_ that was also here understood.

Master embraced the Pet. This seemed correct. Familiar. The Pet embraced Master back, careful of the vicious hooks that curled over his servos... hooks? When had he ever had hooks? He... it... had claws...

"Vos," Master crooned. "Vos, come to berth."

The Pet wanted to turn away. He wasn't interested in seeing this. It made him feel... he didn't know. He didn't like it though. This wasn't a good memory. It hadn't been a good memory even at the time. It had been a lie... hadn't it?

No. Not all a lie. Half a lie. He had wanted the thing that had been between them but at every moment he had been betraying it. His spark was not his to give and even if it had been it already belonged to someone else. Time and distance shouldn't matter. The things he had done shouldn't matter. He just felt so dirty all of the time. Rewind deserved better than him if this ever ended, if he ever got to come home, if he didn't die here...

The Pet shook himself hard all over. These thoughts... they fit oddly. They were his but not his but... Sharp-edged they forced their way into his processor and _pushed_.

He backed away and fell into another memory file opening up before him. Master again. Kaon. Electrical discharges crackling from his plating, around the empty sockets of his eyes. Servos holding him down - that hadn't been possible before, when he... Domin... Pet was bigger. Had always been the one to carry Kaon... Master places if that had been needed. Pain... pain everywhere. He couldn't think right. Something was wrong.

"How could you do this to me?" Kaon demanded, though the words slid in and out of his understanding. "Was any of it real? Or just part of the lie? Pit-spawned slagger, you deserve this, you _deserve this_!"

Dominus struggled but he couldn't move. The agony was worst at the back of his helm - it felt like the plating had been pried open. Something was slicing into him, into his processor.

"If I can't have _us_ at least I can still have _you,_" Kaon whispered into his audial. "You don't get to escape. You don't get to run back home to the Autobots like you planned and you don't get to run to the Allspark either. You're staying right here with _me_."

Someone was crying, the distinctive hiss and snap of boiling plasma, but Dominus was startled to find that it wasn't him. Memory-him had been crying, yes, but this was... this was the other. The alien presence, here sharing the memory with him. He wanted to turn and look at it, examine it, ask it what or who it was, but he was trapped here in the experience.

Then stasis - or the memory of stasis. Then change, again. Dominus struggled to make sense of what he was seeing as images flashed in front of him.

Himself in a shell made monstrous. The thrill of the hunt first feigned and then truly felt. Dealing out pain and blocking out the screams. Enough to make him want to crawl inside himself and never come out.

Pain turned back on himself. Kneeling. Being torn apart. A haze of... of not-knowing. Of barely being. Cycles and deca-cycles and vorns turning and merging into one, a singular now, a constant present. The sense of things being simple and clear, yet now looking and remembering from the outside there was nothing but a nightmare from which he was only now starting to wake up.

He didn't want to wake up. Did he? If he woke up he would have to face reality and there was nothing good there for him...

Minimus. His brother. He had been there, when was that, recently? Everything was too mixed up and he simply couldn't tell. Dominus tried to think about it logically. He had still been with the Justice Division. He had been... Collared. Hurting. Hungry. Then he had seen someone like him, someone familiar, who felt like pack. It had been Minimus - he could see that now, from outside the warped memory files. Dominus had... followed him.

Why was Minimus here? This was not a safe place for him. Dominus was not entirely certain where he had been most recently and why but he knew the DJD had been intent on killing...

He had to wake up. His brother was in trouble. He needed help.

There was something reaching out for him. The stranger perhaps, the other person in his processor. Dominus reached back.

Darkness.

Static.

Rebooting.

Dominus onlined his optics to find he was looking sideways at a wall. No; he was the one lying on his side, pinpricks of pain at the back of his neck as something there slid free. Behind him someone cycled air through their fans and - probably - sat down fast in a clatter of plating.

"Domey! Are you alright?"

That voice... it was familiar. Dominus rolled onto his belly and tried to reset his vocaliser - a vocaliser he suddenly realised he didn't have. Only a low growl emerged, and he flinched at the sound.

"Dominus?"

Dominus looked round. Minimus was crouched next to him on the berth in his Irreducible alt. It was a shock to see him in that form. He couldn't even remember the last time he had seen his brother as a turbofox - it had probably been almost as long since Minimus had seen _him_ in alt before... before what Kaon had done to him.

"Nod if you understand me," Minimus said, his voice not entirely steady. Dominus did as he was asked, aching to speak. What had happened? How had they brought him back? Minimus turned towards... was that Ratchet? The Autobot CMO himself, half-kneeling to check over an unfamiliar, tall mech with yellow and white plating. Ratchet shifted as Minimus called out to him and the movement revealed someone who was far more familiar and far dearer to Dominus' spark.

_Rewind_, he tried to say, but it came out as a bark of mechanimal noise. Rewind was staring at him, frozen in place.

"He'll be wanting that vocaliser installed then," Ratchet said, but Dominus was only half-listening. His conjunx was here. That meant he was going to have to explain... well. Explain everything.

* * *

Ratchet made quick work of inserting Dominus' new vocaliser. Afterwards, Minimus left his brother to talk to Rewind alone. Chromedome left with him, very quiet. He seemed distracted but Minimus could hardly blame him. He had no frame of reference for what Chromedome had just done but there was no possibility that it could have been easy, emotionally or otherwise.

"I'm going to go and... be alone for a bit," Chromedome said. Minimus nodded. He welcomed the idea of some space to think as well.

Megatron would have booted up out of stasis by now. Rodimus would be talking to him about their plans. The fact that they were going to be under attack from a flood of Decepticons in a short while seemed utterly divorced from reality given everything that had been going on, but it would be happening and _someone_ needed to be preparing for it. Minimus should perhaps be there, but what use could he be?

As he trotted through the corridors of the Necrobots home almost aimlessly, Brainstorm stepped out from a door ahead of him.

"Oh good, I've been looking for you," the scientist said.

"Me?" Minimus asked. "Really?"

"Sure," Brainstorm replied. "I was there when you came back from your little scouting trip. You said you were a loadbearer, right?"

"I am, but I fail to see what possible relevance that could have at a time like this."

Brainstorm laughed. "I've been stripping this place for parts. I've got an idea that might help get us out of here alive."

"What kind of idea?" Minimus asked. Brainstorm's ideas were frequently dangerous and potentially explosive, and they were all in enough trouble as it was.

"I assume you've been in loadbearer shells before - what's the biggest you've ever tried to integrate?"

Minimus cocked his helm. For a moment he wondered if Brainstorm knew - or had guessed - about his identity. About Ultra Magnus. It didn't feel like it though. Even if he had, what did it matter now? What was the point in trying to hide things when their deaths seemed all but inevitable?

"How large precisely did you have in mind?" he asked.

Brainstorm shrugged. "Every loadbearer's different. We just need to see what your upper limit is."

"I've never... I've never actually found my limit yet," Minimus confessed.

"Okay, you're gonna have to give me some size pointers then," Brainstorm said. "Oh, and um... if it's not a very, very insensitive question, how did things go with your brother? Is he... back to being himself?"

"Don't," Minimus growled. "He's just started recovering from major mnemosurgery. He is in no fit state to fight."

"If we don't win this, we're going to die," Brainstorm said bluntly. "That includes him. I get it. I do. We just don't have any choice though. We need every frame at our disposal."

Minimus looked down. He was right. "You'll have to be the one to tell Ratchet that."

"Tricky challenge, but I accept," Brainstorm said. "Now come on - I'm going to need to take some measurements."


	6. Chapter 6

-19-

Brainstorm left them alone to start his work. In the space of time remaining before they were called to fight, there was finally an opportunity for Minimus to talk to his brother. Dominus had put up with Brainstorm taking measurements for his own combat-ready shell silently, standing there looking troubled while the scientist moved around him. Now that Brainstorm was gone, he turned to Minimus and cycled air through his vents in a long sigh.

"You helped save me, I think," Dominus said. "I don't have the clearest memory of it all. I don't think there's a way to say how thankful I am for what you've done."

"It wasn't just my doing," Minimus replied. Words were built up in his processor, fighting for priority. He didn't know quite what to say. Thanks? He wasn't worthy of it. Things had almost gone very, very wrong. It was the luck of Primus himself that had gotten them all out of there. No, he did not deserve his brother's gratitude. " I wish I had known sooner. I could have pushed Command for a rescue mission..."

Dominus looked away. "I didn't want you to know - you or anyone else. Besides, I knew going in that there was never going to be an extraction."

Minimus reset his optics, feeling the words as an almost physical blow. "Then why did you agree to it?"

"Someone had to. I was a good choice, objectively. With the war going the way it was, it seemed like we were all going to die eventually, so why not do so making a real difference."

Minimus could find no answer to that. It hung in the air between them. His brother had valued his own life so little. The worst part was that he understood. What was donning the Magnus armour other than taking up a role that he would never get to leave? Making a choice for the greater good, not for himself? Accepting that he would be one of a long line of dead mechs whose names would never be known.

"You wouldn't be so kind with me if you knew everything I've done," Dominus said. He was forcing his tone to stay light but Minimus could hear the strain and static put out by his vocaliser.

"There are things I never got to tell you either about the war," Minimus replied, with sudden desperation. He didn't like the way his brother was talking, and in response everything started to spill out of him. "Perhaps nothing like what the Justice Division might have done when you were with them, but... I oversaw the Wreckers for a time. It's an open secret how low their methods came at times.

"That's just one thing, one part of it. Everything in the war turned horrid, it was just easier not to see it. To pretend everything was straightforward. I don't... whatever you did it doesn't matter anymore. The war's over. There are 'cons out there who did the most awful things and will never face any consequences for it. The same for some Autobots. So... never think I judge you. For anything."

"You know, Rewind said something similar," Dominus told him, with a weak smile. "It doesn't really help."

"What would?" He knew there would not be any kind of simple answer to that. There was little time left before they would be fighting for their lives once again, no time at all to work on deep matters of the spark. Yet how could he fail to ask?

"We'll see," Dominus replied. "If we even survive. Still, it's a greater gift than I ever expected to die with my mind intact rather than as their beast." His plating rippled, resetting itself against his frame. "It would be more than I deserve, but I wish it didn't have to be trapped looking like... this."

It was strange looking at it from the outside. The self-loathing in familiar optics. Was this the uncomfortable, fuel-pipe churn that Megatron and Ravage felt whenever Minimus said something about himself without thinking? He had begun to consider his mechanimal alt differently after so long in their company, but perhaps he hadn't realised how much so until this moment.

"This is us," Minimus said. "The real us."

"That isn't a good thing."

"That's the Functionalists talking," Minimus said.

"I thought I was meant to be the subversive one," Dominus said. Minimus was pleased to note that his smile seemed a little more genuine this time. "Has so much changed since I was gone?"

"There is... a lot," Minimus admitted. How much would his brother remember about the war ending? About Megatron, for that matter! That was going to be a shock if he didn't already know.

"I'll adapt as we go," Dominus said. "Always have."

That was true enough.

Someone knocked on the door, and came in without bothering to wait for an invitation. "Time's up," Brainstorm said. "I've achieved the impossible getting these shells ready in time, though I hope it's enough or no-one will have a chance to appreciate my genius. Rodimus wants us upstairs. Just over three breems until sunset and we need to talk about how we're doing this."

Minimus wanted longer. He wasn't ready for this to be the end. He wasn't ready to lose Dominus again after they had only just found each other. He had no choice in the matter.

"That's fine," he said. "Show us where to go."

Anger curled in Ravage's spark, banked, slow-burning and heavy. The feeling was a familiar one. It had been there in one form or another for most of his functioning, ever since he had pulled himself out of the spark-field and found mechs sneering down at him and telling him he was lesser. Over the millennia it had waxed and waned, but it had never completely disappeared. It couldn't while the remnants of the Functionalists still lived inside the Autobot faction. Now he found that same corruption had taken root in the Decepticons as well.

Rage flashed quick and then collapsed. So did fury. The embers they left in their wake were what had to be nurtured, cared for and shaped into the strength that leant a titanium backstrut to the force of your will and gave you the power to keep the fight going despite it all. The chance for revenge was coming. It might be futile, but Ravage had never let that stop him before.

He spotted Megatron approaching from the direction of medbay and felt a spark of hope. After the damage he had taken most mechs wouldn't have been up on their pedes for some time, but Megatron had never allowed near-fatal wounds to stop him in the past. His ability to fight through what would have killed lesser mechs had just been one more reason the Decepticons looked up to him, followed him. Tarn would not get the same chance again.

"Nice to see you back in the land of the living dead," Rodimus said, with his usual -and arguably inappropriate - levity. "We got you a present." He gestured to the plasma cannon Brainstorm had put together, in amongst all of the other work he'd been churning out over past cycles.

"There's no need for this," Megatron said, frowning. "The storm-shield could hold the DJD off for orns. You should savour every moment."

"Not long enough for help to arrive," Rodimus answered. "We're gonna have to fight it out eventually, so better to get it over with. We've got a few tricks in our subspaces they won't be expecting; we might even win! So pick up the slagging cannon."

"I don't fight. Not anymore. I told you that." Megatron replied. Ravage narrowed his optics. What was this? After nearly dying, after learning of Tarn's ultimate treachery to the cause, he was still going to make a point of his _foolish_ vow?

"Renouncing violence is cool and all," Rodimus said, sounding no more happy. "You know, you and your conscience made a happy couple, but there are five hundred Decepticons out there. You can't keep burying your helm beneath the slag-flow when they're killing us all."

"It's not..." Megatron stopped. His engine turned over in fretful growls. There was something there, some reason that was about more than just his word, but he wasn't going to admit it. Ravage almost snarled. This wasn't about defence anymore. It wasn't about trying to undo the past, to make amends. It was about showing Tarn the monster he had become.

"You're Megatron!" Rodimus was insisting. "If you go out there, cannon on your arm, the Slagmaker himself, half of them might even run away home! What are you _afraid of_?" It wasn't the avenue to go down. Ravage could see it.

"I'll help as I have been helping," Megatron said, sidestepping the question. "I'll co-ordinate the offensive..."

"What are you _doing_?" Ravage didn't even realise he had spoken until everyone turned to stare at him. Tail lashing, he stood forward. He wasn't sure having this argument here, out in the open, was the right thing to do but he had started and couldn't now back down. "You've seen exactly what Tarn has done! That _domestication_. All of them stood by and let him! He has betrayed the cause!"

"The cause is dead," Megatron said. "It has been for a very long time."

"The cause cannot die while Functionalism yet lives," Ravage replied. "It might have been corrupted, but do you think _this_ is going to fix it? Shutting your optics? Pretending none of this is happening?"

"I made a vow." There was more anger now in Megatron's voice. More life. At least now it sounded like his spark was in it. " What use is a promise if mere circumstance makes me change my mind? If I give my word to something I mean to keep it, otherwise it is worthless."

Ravage was used to arguing with Megatron though. He knew the tack to take. "You made that vow a stellar-cycle ago! How can it possibly take precedence over a vow you made four million years before? What about your vow to _us_? To your followers? To the people of Cybertron? If everything went wrong with what we were trying to do, if you want to atone for that, then _this_ is your chance to do so!"

"Ravage..."

Ravage could see the effect his words had on him. The wound in his spark they had torn back open. So be it. Perhaps in the end this was the only way to excise the infection of doubt that had been growing since the official end of the war.

"You cannot let this stand Megatron," he said. "You cannot let Tarn do this to us without repercussions."

He was sure he had him. Doubt and uncertainty were wavering in Megatron's optics.

Then came the interruption. Heavy pedesteps thudded against the floor, sending echoes off the walls and causing every mech to turn and look for their source.

"Am I good or what?" Brainstorm exclaimed, walking into the room in front of his creations. He gestured up at the two massive frames that only just managed to squeeze through the space of the door. Even in his state of anger and hurt Ravage could not help but look upon them and be impressed. Minimus and Dominus were tucked inside shells far larger than he had ever seen a loadbearer wield before. The only mechs in this kind of size class were shuttles and the like, and even they tended to hold most of their mass in subspace. Beastformers certainly never got this big.

"Those are some massive fragging turbofoxes," Rodimus said to himself.

"Was there an argument happening?" Minimus asked, his voice boosted to a deep bass rumble. "I thought I heard something as we approached." He shifted in place, long claws scraping against the floor, uncomfortable at being the centre of attention.

"Nothing to be concerned about," Megatron said, before anyone else could answer. "I have... something to attend to." He stepped past Ravage and headed away down a corridor. Ravage clenched his jaws, hesitating. He ought to be here to talk to Minimus, make sure he was comfortable with the fight to come, co-ordinating their part in the offensive, doing as a good friend ought... but he couldn't just let Megatron walk away from this. Not when he had come so close to convincing him to do what was necessary.

"Come find me before the assault starts," he said sharply, and went bounding after his once-leader.

He was sure they were talking about him as he left. About them both. He hoped that Minimus understood how important this was.

It wasn't hard to catch up to Megatron. Ravage had always been fast, and Megatron wasn't trying very hard to get away from him.

"Are you running?" Ravage demanded. "From me?"

"From a crowd of Autobots - we should not have this conversation in front of them."

Inwardly, Ravage felt a certain satisfaction. Megatron might insist as much as he liked that he was no longer a Decepticon, but a red badge on his chest wasn't enough to get him thinking as one of their age-old enemies. Even now he talked about them like they were separate. "Now we're alone," he said. "So let's talk honestly."

Megatron stopped walking, and turned to face him. He had one servo pressed to his abdomen, over his fuel tank. Why was that? Could he possibly be unwell? Ravage pushed his concern aside. He couldn't let himself get distracted. Megatron's internals were a mess anyway since Shockwave's experiments. Some aches and pains had to be inevitable.

"I can't go out there," Megatron told him.

"Why not?" Ravage snarled. "Tell me the truth. What's your real reason?"

Megatron didn't bother to pretend, to hide behind the argument of upholding his vow. "Rodimus was right," he said. "I _am_ afraid. Not of Tarn. Not of the army he has assembled behind his banner. Of myself." He paused. Ravage cocked his helm, uncertain. It had the ring of truth to it, but he couldn't see...

"The cause didn't die, you were right about that," Megatron continued. "It was corrupted - by me. The moment I let myself use violence as my only weapon. I am not a machine. I am not merely a miner. I am not merely a gladiator. I am not - or _should not be_ \- a warlord. Yes, those were me, a part of me, but they were not what was at my spark. Ravage, the only time I have _ever_ been my truest self was as a poet and a writer, when I spoke the _truth_.

"My _words_ were my weapons, not the cannon I strapped to my arm later on. Yet that wasn't enough. My words were not enough. I forgot them. I set them aside. And because of that, because I smothered my own spark like that, the purity of the cause was smothered.

"If I go back, if I make the same mistake _again_, if I pick up that cannon..."

Silence hung - yet not really silence, broken as it was by the heavy cycling of air through Megatron's vents, cooling systems running hot with emotion.

"If I start the war all over again..."

"I can't argue with a reason like that," Ravage said quietly, looking away. "I'm sorry I forced you to unburden your spark to satisfy me."

"And _are_ you satisfied?" Megatron growled. Ravage couldn't look at his expression.

"If we can't fight them off, Tarn will kill us all," Ravage said. It was monstrous to continue to force the issue, but Tarn was a monster and this situation was of _his_ making. "You'll be made to watch. If the sparks of every one of us, not just your own, are the price of your own lack of self-control..."

"How dare you..." Megatron began, but Ravage interrupted him.

"Isn't that what you just said? That you don't trust yourself? That you haven't learned from your own mistakes, from four million years of pain? That if you get the slightest taste of energon you'll drown the galaxy in it all over again?" He bared his fangs and let his engine growl as hard as it could. "You don't have to be like that! You've changed! Why can't you believe that?"

"I..." Megatron shouted in frustration, silvered glossa running out of words, turned and slammed his fist into the wall. The sound echoed up and down the hall, and the impression left behind was a deep, twisted scar. "The fool's energon..." he said, though it wasn't even a good attempt at an argument.

"Clearly isn't affecting you that much," Ravage said, nodding at the dent he'd left in the wall.

"I... I'll think about what you've said." He gestured back up the corridor. "You should go. I'm not the only one who needs you."

Ravage was fairly certain he had won, but it didn't feel good. He hadn't thought it would.

Dominus itched inside the new shell. The span of time between acting as Agent 113, his discovery by the DJD, and the present was blurred and uncertain, but it had still been long enough that wearing and integrating something felt strange. This was hardly the carefully crafted works of House Ambus either, although Brainstorm had done an impressive job considering this was his first time ever making something like this.

It was still a mechanimal form though. Ratchet might have been able to replace his vocaliser, but there was nothing to be done about his missing t-cog. He loathed it. His plating crawled. Every part of him felt wrong. Unclean. Bestial. Had it been like this, before? It was all corrupted, memory files that wouldn't quite read. The emotions of a time long gone were alien now - they did not feel like his own.

Still, wasn't it deserved? It felt like it was deserved. The things he had done...

No. Better not to think on that. Some things were the same - _had_ to be the same. His feelings for his brother. For his conjunx. Even so, his conversation with Rewind had been awkward and stilted in a way that it had never been before. They had been apart for a very long time. They were very different people.

Then there was Minimus... His brother wasn't the only other beastformer here either, which didn't make his complicated emotions any easier to sort out. He knew of Ravage, although more as the famous monoformer terrorist from before the war than what he had become afterwards. He had been called more beast than mech, but back then they had said that of every beastformer who caused trouble. Minimus seemed to like him, which was enough for Dominus.

He had no intention of getting into the question of why Megatron was here and why he was on their side either. That sort of thing could wait until they weren't all about to die.

Everything that could be done to prepare for battle had been done. These loadbearer shells. Whatever that had been with the mech Skids. The defences on top of the fortress. Now the shield would go down, and the fight would begin. Dominus was ready for it. This was his only chance for revenge.

Fire bloomed over the sodden ground as sparks set pools of spilt energon alight. Red light flickered off Dominus' armour-plating, off-set by flashes of brief illumination from the discharge of energy weapons. The scientist had set turrets on Dominus' shoulders, ungainly at first, but soon second nature to wield. They were hard-wired in through the shell, down to deep ports that opened up in his frame only at a medic's touch. He growled, scanning the field of battle. Tactical arrays lit in his optics, tracking friends, attempting to identify weaknesses upon enemies. A mech came at him and Dominus batted him aside with contemptuous ease. Knife-edged claws caught armour and scored it deeply.

He had lost sight of Minimus and Ravage at some point, although the pair had been sticking together. Now the flames that danced around his pedes choked the air with dark smoke. No part of his visual spectrum was any good at seeing through it. The noise of battle was deafening. Screams and cries, tortured shrieks of metal, weapons fire, all of it making a wall of sound. He had shut his olfactory sensor suite off when the stink of burning, ozone and energon became too much. Frames moved around him, and he struck wherever opportunities presented.

In the chaos he almost missed the red and gold flash of plating. Only when the shock-coils flared white with electrical discharge did the realisation hit him.

Kaon. Kaon was over there, standing on top of the corpse of some fallen mechs with his turbine running at full, blue sparks coruscating up and down his sides and shoulders as they dripped from the coils that generated them.

Dominus stood still. His systems churned. Decision trees returned error messages in his processor.

He had set no search request for memory files yet they queued up to be opened all the same. Kaon had been... They had... He had done this to him. In the end that was what it came down to. No matter what betrayal of his conjunx he had forced himself into to keep his cover, or the mockery of soft emotions that had come along with familiarity and practise... no. None of that was important in the end. Kaon could have let him die a death as honest as possible for a traitor, but instead...

Dominus lunged forwards. Kaon was an average-sized mech, but in this shell Dominus outweighed him by tons. Heedless of the electricity crackling over his plating he tackled Kaon and brought him down to the ground, looming over him with bared dentae gaping over his helm, claws pinning him.

Kaon fired his coils once, twice, but this shell had been built with their foes' talents in mind. The current earthed itself and burned out only redundant pathways as it did so.

Dominus searched Kaon's face, waiting for the moment of realisation, for the reaction. Kaon struggled under him, unseeing. Dominus knew he had the sensory suite to perceive the world without his missing optics, but perhaps in this chaos...

"Don't you know me?" he asked, routing the words through the vocaliser of his irreducible form. He wanted it to sound right, not the shell's deep rumble. "Kaon."

Kaon went still. The anger and rage of battle wiped from his face. "Is that... Pet? Pet... _Vos_? Is that you?"

It hurt. It had been hurting before, but not like this - a sharp stab of pain right into the centre of his spark. Kaon had no right to sound so... so _hopeful_, as though this was a good thing for him, as though this was something he might have wanted.

"Don't... don't call me that," he said.

Kaon reached upwards, and Dominus was struck so motionless by the surreal horror of this moment that he didn't jerk his helm away until Kaon's servos had already started to caress what part of his faceplates he could reach. No, Dominus thought miserably. Not faceplates. His mechanimal snout, his jaws caked and running with energon.

"Vos, I'm sorry," Kaon said, with wonder and what almost seemed like happiness. "I didn't want it to go the way it did, but Tarn was going to kill you and you... you broke my spark, you understand that right? But... but things could go back. Things could still be the way they used to be, I'm sure of it..."

"No, no no no it absolutely can't." Not even if he had wanted it to as much as Kaon clearly did - and the thought of returning to that nightmare was horrific.

"I've forgiven you for what you did," Kaon said with a kind of desperation that was terrifying to watch. "Vos, please, forgive me too?"

What had Dominus thought he would get from this? What had he expected this confrontation to be? He didn't know now. Certainly not this. He felt disgusted, ashamed... other emotions he did not want to examine. There was nothing good here. It was poison, all of it.

"I... I understand why you did it," he said, because that was the horrible truth.

Kaon smiled. "Then I'm certain we can get all of this sorted out." Once the rest of the Autobots were dead, he surely meant.

"I understand." Dominus said. "I don't forgive."

He snapped his jaws closed and felt plating crumple beneath them. It was a kind of mercy, really.

Fighting on the same side as Megatron was almost as intimidating as fighting against him. Minimus tried not to think too much about it, to focus on carving his own path of destruction through the enemy with Ravage darting around his pedes taking advantage of the massive distraction he made in this form. Yet every time he heard the occasional 'thoom' of the plasma cannon his helm jerked up, old war-instincts telling him to be alert for the approaching danger. This time the danger was to the Decepticons. It wasn't even that he was afraid of Megatron - he knew him too well for that by now. It was just that pit-damned cannon.

Whatever the effects on Minimus, Megatron's presence had certainly damaged the morale of the Decepticons. Even so, they had numbers on their side, and Tarn was clearly waiting for them to tire the Autobots out before joining the field himself. Deathsaurus was another matter. Minimus had caught sight of him in the skies several times already, swooping low towards places where his army was faltering.

For a moment there was a lull in the fighting, a moment of peace without a clear target in sight. Minimus circled in place, wary. Smoke billowed everywhere. There was a strange sound, he realised. Some kind of rushing, like a high wind.

Something hit him in the side and bowled him over. Minimus went tumbling over the field of dead flowers in a confusion of limbs, fighting and flailing against his assailant. There were claws carving into him, something jagged and edged biting at his neck. When they finally came to a halt Minimus recovered enough to see the mantled wings over him. Speak of Unicron and summon him, as the old saying went.

There was little time to think. Deathsaurus had identified him as an important target and fully intended to kill him. Minimus fought back with all the skill Ravage had taught him. This shell-form might be larger and more unwieldy than his own turbofox alt, but it was still faster and more dextrous than its bulk might have one think. Deathsaurus seemed not to have been expecting it. Minimus found himself ducking past the other beastformer's guard, sinking fangs into plating, pushing him back and covering them both in their mingled energon.

Then Ravage was there with him. Adapting for his presence felt like second nature at this point. Minimus pressed his advantage, keeping in close and giving Deathsaurus no quarter to take to the air once again. "Pin him down!" Ravage shouted, and Minimus did his best to comply.

It was no easy feat, but after some wrestling, Minimus managed it. Deathsaurus growled and roared at him, struggled and squirmed beneath the powerful frame Brainstorm had built for him, but could not get free. Before long help and allies would arrive for him, but not soon enough.

"Wait," Ravage said, leaping up onto Deathsaurus' chest so he could look their enemy in the optics. "You - listen to me."

Deathsaurus narrowed his optics, the spines at the back of his helm bristling. He made no reply.

"Do you know what kind of mech you've allied yourself with?" Ravage demanded. "Do you know what Tarn has done to a beastformer like us?"

Minimus had not even thought of that question, not even enough to make an assumption either way on what Deathsaurus might believe. _Did_ he know about Dominus? Was he oblivious, or uncaring?

"What are you talking about?" Deathsaurus asked.

"Did none of your mechs think to ask about the turbofox Kaon had chained up in the courtyard of your compound?" Ravage demanded. "Did none of them get close enough to look at him? To _see_?"

There was a flash of doubt in Deathsaurus' expression. Barely there, but Minimus caught it all the same. "A pet," the Decepticon said. "Why should that concern me?"

Ravage snarled. "Not a pet. One of us. A beastformer. _Domesticated_."

Deathsaurus let out an indignant screech. "Lies!" He said. "You know you are losing so you try and turn me against..."

"Minimus here could kill you right now, before help could arrive," Ravage said, not letting him finish. "You are at our mercy. It would make more sense for us to kill you."

"Ravage, is this wise?" Minimus asked, both as an honest inquiry and to play his own part in Ravage's plan.

"Deathsaurus is an honest Decepticon," Ravage said calmly. "He believes in the cause. If Tarn has brought him here under false pretences, then he should know that."

"You make bold claims without evidence," Deathsaurus said. He did not sound certain of himself, Minimus noted.

"Ask him," Ravage said. "Ask him what happened to their former Vos. See how he tries to justify himself, or if he refuses to answer at all. Then ask yourself who is truly on your side." He nodded to Minimus, who carefully stepped away and let Deathsaurus go. This might be a mistake. Deathsaurus was their enemy, and Ravage had been right to say it would make more sense to kill him. Yet if this worked... if Deathsaurus withdrew his army... Tarn would be left with the DJD alone.

That possibility had to be worth the risk.

Deathsaurus looked at them both, then took flight. He circled away from them in the direction of the low rise, where Tarn had been watching the course of the battle.

"I hope that works," Minimus said.

"I hope he tears Tarn apart on his way out," Ravage replied.

-20-

The skies were clouded with smoke from blazing energon, shed from spurting, torn-open lines and set aflame by the constant discharge of weapons. Deathsaurus' wings cut through it silently as he banked over the battlefield, his processor whirling. The symphony of violence - as Tarn would no doubt have put it - was lessened from above and it was easier to think.

He was aware of the history of those mechanisms who shared his class of form - it had been part of his education as a Decepticon - but it had been just that, history. It was an injustice that informed their war and part of the ideology of Functionalism which was their true enemy, but it had never applied to his own life. No prejudice tarnished his career within the Decepticons nor that of his soldiers, which was why it was so hard to believe this of Tarn, Kaon and the others. The Justice Division were the keepers of the creed, the fanatics, the executioners of those who strayed from the purity of the beliefs they held dear. How then could they commit a sin that stank of the worst corruptions of the Senate and the Primes?

It would be easier not to believe Ravage but… well. It was Ravage, crusader for their kind before the Decepticons had even been an idea in Megaron's mind. Deathsaurus might never have had the pleasure of working with that pinnacle of intelligence agents, but he was well aware of the mech's reputation. Ravage wouldn't lie about something like that. On the other servo the DJD were sadistic torturers even if they constrained their activities to those that supposedly, theoretically, 'deserved it'.

The smoke cleared for a moment, just enough for him to see the low hill that overlooked the field. Tarn was there along with Vos, his medic Nickel, and Overlord. Watching. Waiting for the right moment. He would never call Tarn a coward, but he ought to be down here with his mechs fighting as a leader should. He circled and dropped down towards them.

"They are beginning to tire," Tarn said as he landed. "We shall strike the final blow soon enough."

"I have a question," Deathsaurus said. He did not transform, and he kept the power to his anti-gravs flowing in anticipation of a fight. Tarn seemed to believe himself a cultured mech - as though a Towers accent and noble tastes were something to be _proud _of - but his real appetites were far more brutal. Not, in theory, a bad thing for a Decepticon. Enough to be wary of though. "Kaon's pet…"

He saw the way Tarn's optics narrowed. His spark sank. "What are you talking about, Deathsaurus? What does that have to do with the task before us?"

Hydraulics and cables tensed under Deathsaurus' plating. "Is it truly a mechanimal? Or something else?"

In the periphery of his vision he caught the reaction of surprise from the little medic, so much so that she dropped Vos in his rifle alt. Tarn though… Tarn showed no surprise.

"What have you heard?" he demanded. "What have you been told? What do you _think_ you know?" Tarn's attention was off the battlefield now, squarely fixed on the two of them.

"Domestication!" Deathsaurus roared, already tired of circling the issue. "Do you deny it?"

"Of an Autobot spy? Of a traitor in the very heart of my team?" A growing whine filled the air as plasma cannons charged up. "If anyone was deserving…"

Deathsaurus wasn't going to argue ideological points. If Tarn had managed to find some way to justify it to himself then he had twisted the Cause into knots to do so. That made him a hypocrite, just as he had accused Megatron of being. Deathsaurus had no love for Megatron and had left the war because of it, but he would not have come here to kill him without Tarn's arguments. He leapt, reaching out with razored beak and claws.

Tarn's cannons fired, but a moment too late. Deathsaurus brought him to the ground in a thump of dirt, dead flowers and energon. His claws raked across the plating of Tarn's abdomen as Tarn struggled to bring his cannons back to bear, unwieldy at this distance. He was horribly strong, and if he managed to speak… although Deathsaurus had gone for the throat he was unsure if his beak had managed to damage his vocaliser.

Then an arm fastened around his throat, and with a massive jerk pulled him backwards and away from Tarn. He snarled and wriggled in the implacable grasp. A smooth, almost _smug_ voice next to his audials said, "That's enough of that I think."

"Overlord, let go of me," Deathsaurus said, furious. How could he have forgotten about the Phase-Sixer? In his anger he had been careless. Why should Overlord care about the rights of beastformers? He _certainly_ was no believer in the Cause, never had been. He had been a Decepticon only as long as it amused him, as long as his game with Megatron went on. Of course he would stand with Tarn until Megatron was finally dead.

Overlord tossed him away from Tarn, and Deathsaurus rolled back up onto his pedes quickly. Tarn fired at him, the crack-thoom of plasma splitting the air between them, but Overlord deflected the shot by simply pushing his arm away and ruining his aim. "_Megatron_," Overlord said to Tarn, looking meaningfully at the battlefield. "The Autobots are starting to falter. They're pulling back to the fortress. It's time."

Tarn glared at Deathsaurus. He was wounded, energon rolling down his front in a sheet from throat to pelvic plating, but the flow had already been stopped by self-repair. Far from fatal. "I will deal with _you_ later," he said to Deathsaurus.

"It will be _much _later," Deathsaurus replied. "I'm withdrawing my soldiers. We're leaving."

Anger blazed in Tarn's optics, but Overlord was waiting and impatient. "We will manage without them," Tarn said. "Your use is at an end." He turned, with Overlord guarding his back, and stormed away. "Nickel, come on."

She did not follow. After a few more paces Tarn noticed that fact and turned to look behind him.

"What is it?" he asked. Impatient, but there was some attempt at charm there.

"I don't know what domestication is," the medic said, picking her words slowly and with care, "but I did think it was odd that Kaon never wanted me to look at the Pet's injuries."

"Nickel, you know well the fate of traitors; it was necessary…"

"For the Cause?" Nickel asked him. "No, I'm not so sure. I thought the cause was about saving our people, about justice and equality, and that yes, sometimes harsh methods had to be used in service of that. But all of this, coming to this world, it hasn't been about the Cause. It's been about Megatron."

Tarn looked at her and seemed - so uncharacteristically for him - at a loss for words.

"I agree with Deathsaurus," Nickel said. "I don't think you are what you told me you were Tarn."

Next to her Vos transformed with a whirr and spoke in unfamiliar glyphs that Deathsaurus did not understand. By his outstretched servo though, it was perhaps some kind of plea.

"No Vos," Nickel said. "You can't change my mind."

With a shake of his helm, Vos loped over to join Tarn and Overlord. Tarn was still silent, wordless. Then he shook himself, twitched as though intending on doing… something… before turning his back on them again. His shoulders were tight and hunched as he walked away.

Deathsaurus watched him go. Beside him Nickel asked, "Will you tell me what domestication is?"

"It is taking a sentient mech and breaking their mind apart," Deathsaurus said. "Making them no more than a mechanimal. It was an old _punishment_, for those with forms like mine who thought themselves above their station - which was little better than that of a mechanimal in any case." He let a little of his inner tension release, sending a light shiver through his plating. "I need to go. I need to sound the retreat…"

Nickel nodded. "Would you mind it I joined you back at your ship?" she asked.

"Please do," Deathsaurus said. He sprung into the air, sending a signal out on the Warworld broad channel. Fall back. Time to leave. There were fewer replies than he had hoped. He had been aware of the building casualties through the linked communications grid; as Warworld General he had complete access to all tac-net functions. In the brief period he had lost focus on it though even more had fallen. He had known it would be like this fighting Megatron of all mechs, but for his soldiers to lose their lives in the service of Tarn's hypocrisy… It was almost too much to bear. His spark sank heavy in his chest. He had much to atone for. He should not have brought them here.

He no longer cared about the outcome of this battle.

The gift Skid's spark had given the Autobots was starting to fade. Calls of alarm started to filter through their tac-net as mechs lost the powers that had been keeping them alive until now against superior numbers. The background hum of information constantly filtering into his lower processing levels was an old and familiar sensation, one Megatron was uneasy to find that he had missed. Navigating the stream of data came back to him easily, and so did the reflexes of violence.

He still felt in control of himself. Was that reality, or was it the same lie he had told himself for millennia?

_*Form up* _Rodimus sent out on a general signal. *_To Megatron*_

_*No*_ Megatron sent back. Tarn's forces might be hesitant to approach him, but clustering together was not a smart idea under these circumstances. Injury reports and location pings were highlighted, prioritised and dismissed on the peripheries of conscious thought. The tide was turning on them now. _*Fall back to the fortress and make your stand there.* _

_*'Your' stand?* _Rodimus said. _*If we run, we run together.* _

_*Retreat and running are not the same thing.*_ Megatron replied. _*Although if you think they are, it perhaps explains some of your poor choices over the vorns.*_

_*Nice try.* _Rodimus had picked up on his attempt at deflection. _*I know this is totally hypocritical coming from me, but don't do the heroic martyr thing? At least, not without the rest of us.* _

_*Rodimus…* _How much to tell him… _*I have a plan.*_

_*Oh, well if the Mighty Megatron has a _plan…_* _Megatron could almost see the roll of the optics. _*Fine. We'll fall back. Try not to get yourself offlined.* _

_*Careful Rodimus. One might almost think you cared about me.* _He cut the channel before Rodimus could reply. No more time for distractions. When Tarn saw that he was alone, he would come for him. Then the trap, such as it was, would be sprung.

Once back inside the Necrobot's fortress with the storm-shield raised behind them, Minimus spared no time in checking on his brother. He was not the only one with the same instinct - Rewind did so too. The shell Dominus was wearing had a few scars from energy weapons, dents from the impact of fists and other blunt weapons, but the damage was relatively minor and Minimus felt a tension in his spark release when he saw this. The only energon - aside from minor trickles - was splashed over his brother's claws and fangs.

"Minimus, you're not hurt?" Dominus asked him, checking him over with the same anxious eagerness. Minimus shook his helm.

"A few close calls," he said, thinking of the moment Deathsaurus had dive-bombed him. "You?"

Dominus looked away. "I saw Kaon," he said.

Rewind's optics narrowed behind his visor. "Did he try anything?"

The laugh Dominus let out was short and unhappy. "You could say that. He seemed to think… well. It doesn't matter now. He's dead." Minimus had no need to ask how he had died. He could see _that _on his brother's faceplates.

"Did it help?" Rewind asked softly.

Dominus shifted uneasily on his paws. "I don't know yet," he said. Perhaps he might have said more, but his attention was caught by someone approaching. Minimus looked round to see that Ravage was limping over. His left hind leg was twisted, with plating bent and warped out of shape, but he could clearly still walk on it.

"You should get to Ratchet," Minimus told him, his audials twitching flat without his conscious control.

"It can wait," Ravage said. "Minimus, you should know we aren't the only ones who have fallen back. Deathsaurus has withdrawn his forces."

"Why?" Rewind asked. "Megatron is still out there. Wait… is this some kind of single-combat thing on Tarn or Overlord's part?"

Ravage growled his engine in disgust. "I'm sure Overlord would be happy enough with that," he said. "However I _hope_ it's because Deathsaurus has come to his senses. I had the chance to point out a few pertinent facts to him during the battle."

"Pertinent facts," Dominus said, laying his own audials flat.

"You would rather he remain unaware of the DJD's crimes against you?" Ravage asked. He seemed to be genuinely asking.

Dominus vented, and put his helm down on his servos. "Nothing has seemed quite real since I… woke up, I suppose you could say. The things I feel… this isn't the time to talk about them. We could still all offline. If it helps to save us…"

"In my experience, people don't come back from what was done to you," Ravage said, and there was a certain raw quality to his voice that suggested he meant personal experience. Friends, Minimus wondered? "There are a lot of reasons for that, and it being impossible was never one of them. I wish… I want to know what to say to you. I used to be better at this sort of thing."

"At what?" Rewind asked.

"Talking to traumatised beastformers," Ravage said. "Activism isn't only about mailing bombs to Senators you know."

"So what comes next?" Minimus asked, feeling a little awkward and out of place. He didn't know what to say to his brother either. How long would it be until he did? Would he ever? Even though they had been close, social graces had never come easily to him even when he'd had the Magnus armour to hide behind. "Do you know what Megatron has planned?"

"Knowing him?" Ravage said. "It could be anything. As simple as a fist-fight or as complicated as…" He shrugged. "He always has a lot of contingencies."

"He didn't even _want_ to fight today," Rewind said. "Are you telling me he had a plan already made despite that?"

Ravage didn't answer straight away. Eventually he seemed to come to a decision. "I suppose I can tell you this," he said. "I had a lot of time over the millennia to study Megatron. Soundwave and I talked about it a lot. What made him a good leader. Not just his charisma; plenty of mechs have that. Not his ideology - he shaped the Cause and gave words to something unspoken, made it into a thing that could be fought, but that in itself doesn't give someone the ability to lead. What really set him apart was his adaptability.

"Megatron knows what he wants and he has the determination to get it, but he also knows that what he wants tomorrow might be something completely different. Circumstances change, and goals change with it. It's not that he acts on the fly. He _plans_, in every direction he can think of. He sets things up that he might never need to use. _That_'s what makes him a good leader."

Ravage might have gone on to say more, but he was cut off by a shout from Rodimus over by the main viewscreen. "Guys, come see this!"

"What is that?" Minimus asked, as they went over and he got close enough to make out the screen. Some kind of orange-yellow forcefield had sprung into being in the middle of the field.

"Looks like a forcefield," Rodimus said, stating the obvious. "I was getting pretty worried there - looked like Tarn and Overlord had Megs on the ropes, but then he popped up this bubble. Thought that was Trailcutter's thing."

"Yes," Ravage said, "He took it off Trailcutter's corpse. Contingencies, as I was saying."

Rodimus tapped his fingers against the console. "What's the point though?" he said. "He's in a bubble, we're in a bubble, neither of them are going to last long enough for help to arrive."

"What I don't get is how he's even powering it!" Brainstorm said. "That's not how forcefield generators work!"

"I don't know _everything_," Ravage said, as all optics turned to look at him.

"Overlord is leaving!" Rodimus said, actually punching the air in triumph. "Not sure why, don't _care_ why, but he's just transformed and taken off."

"That is odd," Ravage said.

"I just _said_ not to question it," Rodimus complained. "You don't question good luck. If you do then the universe realises and throws some bad luck your way." He glanced back to the screen and slumped, pointing at it. "Like that, for example. Slag. The DJD are starting to break through."

"Megatron can handle the DJD," Ravage said.

"You seem very confident," Minimus observed. He was a little more doubtful himself, although he desperately wanted Ravage to be right.

"Just wait and see."

-21-

Megatron remained kneeling as the four members of the DJD still alive pushed their way through the forcefield. Overlord was not with them - his leaving perhaps spoke to some new-found maturity or personal growth, that he might not be under the sway of his obsession any longer. Megatron had been prepared to fight them all, but his chances were better with Overlord gone. He did not fear Vos, Helex or Tesarus. He knew he was a match for them. Only Tarn had been in any doubt - and Tarn thought him weakened. Bereft of moral courage. Their confrontation amongst the flowers of Megatron's victims had surely cemented that idea in Tarn's processor, and taking to the battlefield again now should not have shaken it.

Tarn appeared too confident for it to be otherwise.

"Finally," Tarn said. "Did you really think you could keep us out?"

Megatron pushed himself to his pedes. A well-placed shot from Vos had disabled the replacement plasma cannon Brainstorm had made for him, but he didn't need it. It was just another tool, not the part of himself it had as good as become during the war. Optimus had not been trying to do him a favour by forcing him to smelt it, but unintentionally that had been the effect.

He let the anger come, unleashed it from behind the wall of his iron self-control. He _was _in control here. If he was not sure of that, then Tarn had won either way.

"It was never about keeping you out," he said. "It was about sealing you in."

Doubt flashed behind Tarn's optics. It was enough for Megatron to reach for him, reach for the gaudy statement he wore on his arm and rip it away from him.

"Two plasma cannons?" he said, hating the attempt at emulation, the attempt to mirror Megatron himself only _more_. There was a deep insecurity inside of Tarn's spark and he railed at his own past self who had seen that and decided it could be played with rather than fixed, that saw a leash rather than a liability. "Look at yourself."

This was not what Tarn had expected, he could see that. He had tried to talk to Tarn before, tried to reason with him and make him understand why he had left the Decepticons, why he had done something Tarn could only have felt spark-deep as abandonment. It hadn't worked then, and Tarn was far past that now. Ravage had been right, as he so often was. Megatron's fear of himself - this _version _of himself, the violent warlord who had warped the Cause out of all recognition - was a liability of its own if it stopped him from doing what was necessary. Fighting, and killing, when it was _necessary_.

Pragmatism. Hadn't that always been at the core of him? He'd thought so, but if that had really been the case he would not have been so dogmatic, would not have been unable to countenance the idea of compromise…

"Do you have nothing to say for yourself?" Megatron asked.

Tarn squared his shoulders. "You're right," he said. "I don't need a cannon to kill you."

Megatron could have laughed, but he wasn't in the mood. Instead he reached for the greatest of all his contingencies, the interface within his warped internals, the place that Shockwave's research had torn open in the collision of dimensions. The event horizon.

Tapping it was like trying to drink a sea of energon. It spilled over, seared into strange plasma that wept from his optics. Tarn backed away, all of them backed away, and came up against the barrier unable to pass through from this direction.

This might kill him as well. He had always known that was probable.

"The time to run from this was long ago Tarn," he said. "You could have walked away at any point before the one where I found out what you had done, the crime you in your hypocrisy had committed. It's too late now. As you ought to know, there must be… justice."

At least Tarn didn't pretend he didn't know what he was talking about. At least he had _that_ honesty. "You are the one who has betrayed the Cause here, not me," he snarled. "_You_, who should have known better than anyone…"

"If you don't understand by now you never will," Megatron said. The time for talking was over… but something in him rebelled at that idea. Wasn't that the same thought that made him pick up the cannon in the first place, that had started the corrosion of his original intent? If his words were useless, those same words that had spurred a world to revolution, then what good was he?

"He's not one of us!" Tarn said, nearly howling. "He's a traitor, an _Autobot_ _betrayer_, he's not worthy, not deserving, not a _person_."

"You sound like _them_!" Megatron shouted. "Is personhood defined by the state? Handed down by fiat as a reward for good behaviour? Tarn you are deceiving yourself!" The words were like blows, hammering cracks into the armour of Tarn's mind. Tarn, who of all mechs knew his writings down to intimate detail, knew the truths he had tried to force the decadent, corrupt and self-deluded of Cybertron to see. Tarn who had been Glitch who had been Damus, resenting his Empurata but longing for what had been snatched away, for the trappings and luxuries of the Senate and the Towers, of the high caste.

That Tarn had become this was not all his fault. Megatron took his share of the blame. Tarn had looked to him to guide him, as a mentor and more, and he had not used that responsibility well.

Tarn yelled in rage, wordless, edged slightly with the power of his voice that it seemed he was too wild with emotion to use. He swung at Megatron, artless blows that still held the power of struts and cables suffused with the Nuke that he had grown too reliant on. Megatron took it, his armour thick enough to bear it. He hoped Tarn would burn himself out, might weary enough for sense to penetrate his processor, but soon it became clear that Tarn had no intention of stopping. Megatron couldn't remain passive forever - and there was the rest of the DJD to consider. They were hanging back for now, afraid of him or afraid of Tarn. That would not last.

At least he had tried words. At least that.

Besides, even if they stepped down, even if Tarn admitted he had been wrong, that couldn't erase what he had done. He would not mock Dominus Ambus' pain by sparing those who had tortured him so.

"The dream - the nightmare - it dies today," he said, and reached for the endless well of void-born power. It was barely under his control - energy lashed out and stripped Vos' plating from his protoform. The mech screamed in agony and Tarn turned, still capable of some kind of empathy for his comrades.

"Vos…" Tarn's servo stretched out, but he had no power here.

"You no longer deserve your titles," Megatron said. "You'll die under your birth names, starting with you Forestock."

Vos ripped apart, shredded, disintegrated by the wild arcs of antimatter.

"Crucible." Helex was next. "Scissorsaw." Then Tesarus. Only Tarn was left.

"At least I'll die a Decepticon," Tarn told him. Megatron ripped the mask from his face with a roar of outrage.

"That is the one thing you _won't_ die as!" he said, and lifted Tarn up by the throat. Antimatter was beginning to burn him now too, licking over his plating like acid. There was no scent of vaporised metals to it - it was destruction utter and profound.

"Megatron!" Rodimus' voice coming from behind him was completely unexpected. How had he managed to get inside the forcefield? It should be impenetrable. "Leave him, I've come to pull you out. You'll die too if you stay here!"

As though he didn't know. He had no plan for his own escape, but here Rodimus was as though sent by Primus himself. Megatron did not believe in such powers or in fate, but he would not turn away from this unlooked-for luck.

"Goodbye Damus," he said quietly, and left him behind in this place of certain death.

"There," Ravage said, with evident satisfaction. "Finally, justice." Minimus was not entirely sure he agreed, but there was no use in bringing up technicalities. There had been no court, no trial, no due process of the law which the term 'justice' implied, but such formal constructs could never have been brought to bear. This was perhaps as close as one could get under the circumstances. Call it _vigilante_ _justice_ \- more generous than revenge.

Rodimus reappeared with Megatron in the centre of the room in a bright flash, wild radiation swirling around them. It subsided swiftly, and after a moment Megatron let Rodimus' servo fall from his own.

"It's hard to believe we're all still alive," Dominus said quietly, resetting his optics. The two of them were still in the massive shells Brainstorm had built for them, there not having been any opportunity to shed them. It was less awkward to sit there and be still, avoiding getting in anyone's way. Every moment Megatron had been dealing with the DJD things had been happening here in the citadel. They may have fallen back, but they certainly had not been idle.

"Hard to believe any of this," Minimus replied, scanning the room. In all the battle there had been only one final casualty. Skids, who had given his spark for the chance the rest of them might have the strength to fight and live. His sacrifice would not be forgotten.

Megatron too was taking stock. He had several injuries, but none appeared to be serious enough to affect his function. "You all made it back," he said after a moment. "Good."

"Thanks to you I suppose," Rodimus said, half-grudging - but only half. He was smiling despite his tone. "Did you have a plan to get out by the way, or did you actually need the rescue?"

Megatron shrugged. He looked tired, something he usually would have tried to hide in public. Minimus felt a slight frisson of concern. With all Ravage's reassurances about Megatron's ability to be prepared for every scenario, the possibility that he might have died had never been something Minimus' processor took seriously. And yet…

Rodimus reset his vocaliser. "Well," he said brightly, "it's been a busy few breems while you were taking care of business. Guess what, those organics we were protecting - not organics at all! It was some kind of scheme the Necrobot cooked up with this." He held up the briefcase. "Not just for teleporting you out of antimatter fueled bubbles."

Megatron frowned, distracted from wherever his thoughts had been taking him. "That is one of Brainstorm's briefcases."

"Yup," Rodimus confirmed. "It's okay, Ravage told us. It's the one you hid the last time we were here, although turns out it was a good thing you had Ravage steal it." He gestured towards the back of the room where their new arrivals had been keeping well out of the way. "Look! The not-apparently-dead!"

It didn't take long for Megatron to deduce what Rodimus was talking about. Minimus himself had barely had time for his systems to integrate the ramifications of this latest twist in the tale of the _Lost Light_. Swerve and Rewind had discovered the truth about the sleeping 'organics' after they had fallen back to the citadel, while they were trying to find a way to do something to save them from the Decepticons and the DJD were beating their way inside Megatron's forcefield. The closer inspection had revealed a holographic camouflage field and the Cybertronians beneath it. Once they knew what they were dealing with it had been easy to wake them up. If only they had known earlier…

"This is Roller," Rodimus said, starting introductions. "He was a good friend of Orion's though I don't think you guys ever met. That's Wavelength, and Siphon…" But Megatron had stopped listening. He was starting at one of the mechs in particular, a miner or other heavy construction bot judging by the hazard striping on him, and the mech was staring straight back.

"Megatron?" the stranger asked. "Is that you?"

"Terminus?" Megatron said, his vocaliser actually glitching.

"This isn't Messatine, is it," Terminus said, pushing a little past some of the other time-shifted bots. Megatron was moving too - the cannon disengaged from his arm with a click and fell with a clatter to the floor. Then he swept the stranger up into a hug, of all things. Ravage made a strangled noise of surprise.

"I thought he detested hugs," Minimus said.

"He does," Ravage replied. "Usually. I suppose this must be the exception."

"Who is that to him?" Minimus asked.

Ravage shook his helm. "We will have to ask him."

The Decepticon Justice Division were dead. Sparks snuffed, no hope of revival. Dominus was having difficulty getting his processor to accept that. Logic trees followed the flow of information as though they should reach the correct solution, yet jumped the tracks at the last moment, looping around endlessly.

He should feel happy. Satisfied, at the very least. Not… morose. Afraid. A kicked _pet_ waiting for the next blow to come.

There must still be glitches in his programming, damage left over from what had been done to him. Something that could be repaired. That was a more palatable explanation than the possibility that this might be _him_, his own personality matrixes responding to events. He did not want to think that so long undercover had warped him even before the domestication, even though some part of him _knew_ it was the truth.

He had tried to say it, to Rewind, to his brother. The words hadn't come out right. He had seen their blank looks and known they weren't understanding. He wasn't the mech they had known. He was so, so thankful to have been restored to something approaching himself but that didn't mean he deserved their company. Their affection. When they realised all the terrible things he had done to maintain his cover, when Rewind learned that he had broken the promise of their _conjunx_ bond for the same reason…

They might not see it yet, but that was only because everyone was so distracted. The threat had been dealt with, but they were still trapped on this planet and it was not clear where they should go from here. Rodimus wanted to find some way to leave straight away, while Megatron thought it more prudent to wait for the assistance it seemed likely was coming.

Megatron… Another thing his processor was having a hard time understanding. Minimus had tried to explain it, but it was hard enough to accept that the war was even over, let alone what had happened after the start of peace. He was stuck between the past with all its horrors and this new, strange present. Could he even bring himself to move forward? To adapt? To overcome?

"You seem deep in thought." The smooth voice broke through the repeating chains of code in his processor. Dominus reset his optics, refocusing on the outside world. Ravage was sitting next to him - out of the loadbearer shell, they were roughly the same size.

"I wasn't expecting anyone to come and find me," he replied.

"I understand the need to be alone," Ravage said. "Still, your brother and your _conjunx_ are worried about you."

Dominus didn't _think_ he had flinched, but something gave him away to Ravage's sharp optics.

"It took me a while," Ravage continued. "It was a bold mech who gossipped about the DJD before or after the end of the war, but there wasn't a lot that didn't get back to Soundwave in the end. I've been comparing timelines in my processor. There was something, wasn't there, between you and Kaon?"

Dominus growled, baring his dentae before he could think better of it.

"I am not judging you," Ravage said. "Soundwave is - _was _the head of Decepticon Intelligence, as Prowl was head of yours. I understand the necessities of spycraft, and so does Rewind, if not quite so concretely."

"Understanding and acceptance are two different things," Dominus said. "Maybe there was a time where I _did_ feel _something_ for Kaon although I'm not sure I remember it exactly, but don't think that sympathy extended…"

"I wasn't trying to suggest you might have forgiven him for what he did to you," Ravage said, seeming genuinely upset.

"I _understand_ why he did it," Dominus said, still venomous. "I certainly don't _accept it_. You see my point? So they tortured me, humiliated me, degraded me - I did all that to mechs over and over and over when I was with them. So if Megatron has decided he cares about _real_ justice suddenly, perhaps he should have torn _me_ apart with the rest of them!"

The silence held like thin crystal, that would fracture at the slightest touch. Dominus' emotional subroutines were whirring, heating his circuits. Had he really meant that? Was that what he really thought - what he really wanted?

"Killing them wasn't about the torture - not all about that," Ravage said, looking as surprised as Dominus felt and searching for something to say. "There are too many on both sides who have committed atrocities - if they all had to die then our race truly would be at an end and the tide of energon would never stop. This was about… about the Cause, and hypocrisy, and the simple fact they were trying to kill _us…_"

Dominus growled derisively. "Why are you trying to defend me from the truth? Do you think anyone is going to thank you for it?"

"What do you _want_?" Ravage asked him. "For Minimus and Rewind to pretend they don't care about you? To leave you on this planet to die of energon starvation? To march you in front of a firing squad? What does your future look like?"

"I don't know!" Dominus said. "What use even am I? I might have my voice back but I'm still stuck as a mechanimal. Even if I hadn't done all the terrible things I have, you think Rewind would even still want me…"

"I thought you knew better than that Functionalist slag!" Ravage shouted, raised to sudden anger with his own engine growling.

Dominus said nothing. He should have expected a reaction like that. Ravage had been famous even before the war. His terrorism had only hurt the cause of beastformers trying to prove they _weren't_ mindless, violent killing machines, in Dominus' opinon. But that was Decepticons for you. Why try to work in a civilised way when you could use violence instead?

Ravage vented out heated air, his anger subsiding as quickly as it had arisen. "Minimus was like this at first as well," he said, mostly to himself. "He seems to have gotten over it with time." He looked Dominus over, his optics speculative. "No-one has an appetite to give a suicidal mech what he's looking for. Maybe we can start there."

Dominus' audials twitched. "What do you mean?"

"There's a mech I think you need to talk to," Ravage said. "His name is Rung."

That had been a troubling conversation with Dominus Ambus, but Ravage thought it had reached a reasonable resolution in the end - or at least a good place to start from. His opinion of Dominus had never been particularly high, but that wasn't due to anything he had done during the war. It was his typical upper-caste cowardice when it came to pushing for the changes that had needed to be made - but all of that was ancient history. History that was forgotten at one's peril, but still. There were more important concerns now. Beastformers needed to stick together. Ravage would work on Dominus as he worked on Minimus, although he suspected it would take Dominus much longer to get to the same place.

Where did they all stand now? What was the next step along the path?

He went to find Megatron, but he wasn't in the citadel. Out in the flower fields with Terminus then. The two of them had been catching up. Ravage thought it was doing Megatron good. For all his confidence in Megatron's abilities, the end of the business with the DJD had worried him. Megatron was… changing. He hadn't wanted to see it at first. Ravage had believed all of this - turning coats, the trial, the Captaincy of the _Lost Light_ \- was all part of some great plan. Something for the Decepticons, for the Cause.

It wasn't. Not in the way he had thought.

Perhaps Megatron had a point, about the fact that things had gone too far. Perhaps a different approach needed to be taken. If he had to walk this strange path, adapt and evolve to find it, then so be it. Soundwave was still out there, safeguarding the Decepticons as they had been. He would make sure the Cause survived until Megatron became whatever he needed to be.

Terminus was helping with that. Easing the pain of a new transformation, anchoring him to his intentions as Ravage had been, as Minimus had been. Having one more friend could not be a bad thing.

Ravage did not know exactly what would happen now. That was simply one of the perils of being with the _Lost Light_. What he did know, was that they were all going to face it together.

Coming so close to death had made Minimus realise that there were things he had been ignoring, things that had slipped beneath his notice because his attention had been focused on himself and his own problems. Those problems had not been small, given what Tyrest had done to him, but some of it had been symptomatic of his own attitudes towards himself and his alt mode. Ravage had helped him to see that. Now he felt - not precisely at peace. But better.

Tyrest had been trying to punish and degrade him by trapping him in alt, but there was nothing _inherently_ degrading about his irreducible turbofox self. There were only the beliefs of the Functionalists which made it so, beliefs which he had internalised despite thinking himself better than that. It was still difficult not to fall back into that reflexive pattern of thought, but now that he was aware of its existence it grew easier with time.

It was certainly _inconvenient_ to be unable to transform, to lack the benefit of servos with opposable thumbs, but he no longer felt the desperate ache to have his t-cog back. It was no longer his goal above all other goals. If there was a way then yes he wanted to find it, but if there wasn't then he thought perhaps… perhaps he could be at peace with that. Ravage had managed for all these millennia.

He had much to thank Ravage for.

Now he had the processing power to concentrate on the problems of others, Minimus could feel a little of Ultra Magnus coming back. The familiar sense of responsibility, of _duty_. His duty was not to the law, to the Tyrest accord, or to the Autobot code, not anymore, but it _was_ to his friends. To Ravage, to Megatron, to Dominus, to Rodimus, and to the rest of his crew, those who had remained loyal and not mutinied against them.

That was why he had come to find Rodimus right now.

"Give me a minute," Rodimus said, as the door hissed open, then added, "oh, Minimus. I didn't realise it was you."

Minimus entered with some hesitation. He had expected to find Rodimus alone in here, but in fact he was sitting on the floor across from Drift, who was wielding a spray-brush with the confidence of someone who used one frequently. "You're… having yourself repainted?" he asked, although it was obvious that was what was going on.

"I… yeah," Rodimus replied, his faceplates going blank.

"Rodimus has decided to convert to Spectralism," Drift said, starting up the brush again. He was halfway through Rodimus' chest-plate. "It's something we were talking about for a while before I left." Rodimus flinched slightly. The brush skidded, leaving a line of purple over red. Drift recalibrated his aim.

"I assume the colours have a specific meaning then," Minimus said. "I am afraid I am not as familiar as I should be with some points of Spectralist belief."

"Mourning for a fallen comrade," Rodimus said, glyphs clipped.

Drift reset his optics. "That, or a statement of intent," he said, keeping his tone even and mild. "A promise sworn against the spark, to kill one's enemy."

Minimus' audials flicked down against his helm. What were Megatron's views on Spectralism, he wondered? If there had even been a statement in Megatron's writings about his choice of purple as the colour of the Decepticon faction, he could not recall it.

"Getaway stole my ship. He suborned my crew. He left us here to die." Rodimus scowled. "Frag yeah I'm gonna kill him."

Minimus reset his vocaliser. "Rodimus… I actually wanted to talk to you about something. It might be better if I waited until Drift finished though."

"I can finish this later, if it's urgent, or private," Drift said.

"Not urgent, but…" Minimus found it a little difficult to make his systems categorise Drift as trustworthy primarily because of his history as Deadlock, but that was old and now-irrelevant prejudice. Drift was Rodimus' best friend. He should know how Minimus had failed him. "I came to apologise."

"Apologise?" Rodimus said, frowning. "Why?"

"Rodimus, you are my Captain. My… friend, if I may be so bold. I feel I have been unworthy of that friendship over the past deca-cycles. After Orion's harsh words to you, after he installed Megatron as co-Captain, you were in a place of vulnerability, and I… I did nothing to help. I… I knew that you were struggling, because you had told me so, even if you didn't mean to. Yet I did not support you. In fact, I now see that it appeared that I chose Megatron over you by moving in as his room-mate even though that wasn't my intent."

"Huh," Rodimus said. He looked as though someone had delivered a heavy blow to the side of his helm.

"You were doubting yourself as a leader," Minimus continued. "I can imagine that the mutiny might have reawakened that doubt. Rodimus, you are a _good_ Captain. Please believe that. In the future, as we carry on from here, whatever our aim… I mean to try and be more supportive of you."

"That's… uh. Thank you," Rodimus said. "That… that means a lot actually, coming from you."

Drift's optics had narrowed slightly throughout this speech. "I don't mean to criticise," he said, "but I don't remember us ever meeting. Yet you claim to be very close to Rodimus. Who are you exactly?"

No, of course he didn't know, Minimus realised. He had left because of Overlord, before Luna-1, before Tyrest. He might not even know Ultra Magnus was 'dead'.

"This is Minimus," Rodimus started to say, clearly casting around for some excuse that would respect Minimus' wishes to remain apart from his old role.

"We have met before," MInimus surprised himself by saying. He paused. Was he comfortable with this? Yes, he rather thought he was. He would not sully the name of Ultra Magnus by being associated with it! His alt was not something to be ashamed of!

"You sure about this?" Rodimus asked him.

Minimus nodded. "Drift should know," he said. "The rest of the crew as well. I'm ready for that.

"We have met before Drift. You knew me by a different name, and a different form. It is something of a long story, but I used to be called Ultra Magnus."

And he began to explain.

-END-


End file.
